Disclaimer: "Harry Potter" and anything familiar connected to it belong to J.K. Rowling, and not to me! I'm just a poor, devoted fanfiction fanatic, as are most of us on this site!

Summary: Tonks teaches Sirius an important lesson. Set during OOTP. Not romantic.

Note: For anyone looking for Tonks/Sirius romance, this is not the story for you. This has no romance between them whatsoever. I mean – Tonks' mother was his cousin! That makes him her uncle, sort of, doesn't it? THERE IS NO ROMANCE IN THIS STORY. And this is a one-shot fic.

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Blood Tells

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Nymphadora Tonks did not like this house. She didn't like it at all.

She wandered down the hallway of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, wishing she hadn't agreed that it was late after dinner and given in to Sirius's suggestion that she stay the night rather than Apparate all the way to an apartment that was in a strictly Muggle neighborhood. What harm would it have done her to walk the length of her street in the night-time? She was an Auror, for pity's sake, no one could harm her! But she knew why she had given in. There were many reasons, but the main one was that she was determined not to be afraid of this house. She had every right to it, after all. She was half-Tonks, but she was half-Black as well!

She hadn't been able to sleep and had decided to leave her go room and go downstairs and heat up some chocolate. She would have loved to run down these dark and forbidding corridors, but her clumsiness forced her to walk slowly and carefully – so that she didn't wake the others up.

All she needed now was to run into Kreacher ...

Tonks felt rather lost and lonely. By character she was by no means a girl who was frightened of things like the dark – nor was she remotely squeamish. But this house ... it brought out all her hidden fears and insecurities. It was laughable – she, Tonks, afraid? Insecure? Since when was she anything but bubbly and vibrant? It was this house ... damn this house ...

But she was going to make sure it stopped getting to her.

Nymphadora Tonks wasn't afraid of anything.

When she reached the bottom floor, she forgot to be careful and made the mistake of lifting her wand, with the lumos-light at its tip. It flickered against the portrait on the wall of the corridor, and a handsome man with cruel eyes opened those eyes and glared at her.

"You," he hissed bitterly, "Half-breed, traitor, stained dirt! You have no right to be here, to pollute the house of my fathers ... how dare you bring your taint and your dirt into this hallowed home? Filth ..."

Tonks froze. Normally, she would have blasted the portrait with her wand or given him a severe tongue-lashing. But the combination of her nerves and the shadows and the venom in one of her own ancestor's voices made her freeze, rooted to the spot, staring back at the man with wide eyes.

"I – "

"Filth!" he spat.

Unbidden, a memory came rushing back to her ...

"Filth," spat the tall, dark-haired woman. Tonks, four years old and trembling under the sheer poison in the haughty, sneering voice and venomous, heavy-lidded eyes. "Just a little piece of filth."

"How dare you!" cried Andromeda, Tonks' mother, "You leave her alone, Bella!"

"Andromeda, you disgust me," Bellatrix Black said bitterly, "First you marry that tainted Mudblood – and then you have the nerve to produce this little worm and expect her to be called a Black? We Blacks are a proud and noble family, Andromeda! You should know that! You defiled us with your rebellious act, and now this is the last straw. Don't expect cheers from me or the family."

"I don't want cheers," Andromeda said coldly, eyeing her sister with dislike, "In fact, if I remember correctly, Bella – YOU were the one who came here. I didn't invite you, nor did I give you my permission to come into MY home. So tell me – and make it quick, because my daughter and I have a busy day ahead of us – what are you here for?"

"I came to see my little niece, of course," Bellatrix said with sugary, false sweetness, reaching out a pale hand towards Tonks, cowering in the corner. "Come here, little one. Meet your Aunt Bella."

Tonks was lulled in by the sweet, hypnotic charisma of the woman, and moved towards her, tentatively reaching out towards the pale hand. She didn't see the look of fear that flashed across her mother's face, nor did she see the malicious gleam in Aunt Bella's eyes.

But she felt its spite.

The pale hand shot out as soon as Tonks was near enough and scratched deep down Tonks' small forearm. Angry red streaks appeared; drops of blood – Tonks let out a cry.

"Look at her – crying like a baby," cackled Bellatrix.

Andromeda's wand was out. "You've pushed me one too many times, Bella," she said, her voice dangerous and angry.

"I've been waiting for this." The two sisters faced each other, both dark- haired but one cold and one warm, both glaring at each other with mutual dislike, their wands out and pointed. Tonks covered her ears with her hands, trying not to listen to the words they were screaming at each other. She had thought Aunt Bella would be like Uncle Sirius, who had come to see Mum only a few weeks ago. He had been nice, but Aunt Bella had hurt her. Hurt her ...

Filth ... little worm ... crying like a baby ... dirt of a Muggle ... mutated and corrupt ... not fit to live in this world ... insult to the Black family name ...

Tonks began to cry.

Tonks backed away from the portrait again, fighting back the old tears. She pointed her wand at the portrait, felt a flash of horrible anger as she saw Aunt Bella standing in the place of the handsome wizard who was uttering familiar words ... and she whispered: "Silencio." He was silenced.

And once again, she was alone.

She was shaken and disoriented, and hated herself for it.

For heaven's sake! It had been sixteen years since that incident at home. How could she still let it torment her and how could she not forget it?

But Aunt Bella hadn't been the last to insult her birth and her blood ...

"I am a Black," she said coldly to the silently yelling portrait, "I am just as much of a Black as you are. It's you who is the filth, who defiled our name. I haven't. So why don't you just go to hell?"

She turned, and stalked down the corridor, knocking over an umbrella stand on the way.

She passed a large doorway as she marched, and on an impulse, she stopped. It was time to face old demons. She turned and walked into the room – a room she had rather carefully avoided as much as she could. Without hesitating, she glanced at the window, through which moonlight streamed, squared her shoulders, and walked directly across to a large, glittering tapestry.

THE NOBLE AND MOST ANCIENT HOUSE OF BLACK.

"Wotcher," she greeted the glittering names with her old grin. Harmless, dirty old tapestry. To think she had ever thought it intimidating ...

'Black' was right, for sure.

She looked over it for a few minutes, noting all the cigarette burn-like holes in various places where several names had been blasted off. There were no Weasleys, no Andromeda Black, no Ted Tonks, no Nymphadora Tonks, no Sirius Black, no Uncle Alphard Black ... but the number of cigarette burns was pitifully small.

Tonks shook her head rather sadly. There were barely five people who were considered 'unworthy' and removed from the tapestry! What did that say about her own blood and heritage?

"So," she said aloud, "You're my family."

"Hardly."

Tonks jumped and spun around. To her astonishment, she saw Sirius sitting in an armchair not far behind her. His elbow was resting on the desk beside him, the fingers of that hand crooked around the stem of a glass of whiskey. The moonlight fell across half of his face. There was bitterness as well as amusement in his dark eyes.

"Damn it," Tonks said indignantly, "I'm too young to die of a heart attack, Sirius, for pity's sake! Don't do things like that."

"Sorry," he grinned.

"What're you doing down here anyway?"

"Couldn't sleep."

Tonks rolled her eyes and flopped down in the armchair closest to Sirius's. "You'd better join the club, Uncle."

"I thought I've always told you I don't like being called 'uncle'?" Sirius said, smiling at her and shaking his head. "I know your mother was my cousin, but that doesn't mean I'm old enough to be a twenty-year-old's uncle. Oh no ... I am old enough to be a twenty-year-old's uncle." He looked at her, suddenly serious. "How did she take my arrest, by the way? I've never asked."

"She was broken up about it," Tonks admitted, wishing he hadn't made her think about it all. Her memories were full of her mother's sadness and her valiant attempts to be cheerful and bright for her daughter and husband. "But she refused to believe you'd really killed them."

"Ironic," said Sirius with wry bitterness, "That my best friends didn't believe me and my cousin continued to believe in me."

Tonks knew the answer to that puzzle, but didn't mention it. It was blood, of course. Blood could always be told. Sometimes, the greatest bonds were those forged by blood, and she knew it. That didn't work every time, strictly. But most of the time.

She looked at Sirius. She really admired him, and liked him a great deal. He was fun and interesting and didn't set much store by good behavior and rules (clearly, those were Black traits). But most of all, she admired his courage. He had been haunted by this house for years, and had thought he had finally been able to escape it. Then, out of the blue, he had been forced to return to it, without even being able to leave its 'safety'. It had to be a nightmare. Tonks felt ashamed of herself. Here Sirius was, spending twenty-four hours of each day in the house of their fathers and facing his demons, and she was getting nervous and unsettled by spending one night. It was time, she thought determinedly, for the both of them to get rid of their family's demons.

"Have you really stooped so low," Sirius asked her now, gulping down the last of his whiskey in the glass, "That you're resorting to calling – " he nodded at the tapestry with utter distaste and near-hatred, "– Your family?"

"I don't have anyone else, do I?"

"You still have Ted."

Tonks smiled slightly. "Do I really? Dad's different, Sirius, he hasn't been the same since – I don't think he ever loved me even a third as much as he loved Mum. I'm just a pale shadow to her memory now. Ever since she died, he's wanted to renounce and leave the magical world entirely. He and I have been having problems because I'm an Auror and won't leave it behind."

"Well," Sirius grinned crookedly, "Ted's a good guy, but always was a bit of an idiot. Forget those names on the tapestry, Tonks: you've still got me."

She laughed. "Heck, Sirius, that's reassuring."

There was a drop of whiskey left in his glass. He flicked his wrist and splashed the drop at her with a chuckle. For a little while, they talked about the Order and about Harry and those sorts of things. Tonks noticed a light in Sirius's eyes every time he talked about Harry. The boy was more like a son to Sirius than anyone could be. Tonks smiled to herself as she thought about the bond between them. She would hate to see what would become of either of them if they lost the other ... she frowned at herself. What on earth made her think of something like that? How ridiculously pessimistic! But admittedly, she liked Harry very much herself. He was a good kid.

Sirius's next words made her blink: "I'm sorry, you know." It was gruff and rather constrained, as Sirius's apologies always were.

"For what?" she demanded, baffled.

"For not being there ... when Andromeda died." He looked at his empty glass, and sighed. "I know what you're going to say, Tonks, so save your breath. I should have been there for you. You were barely seventeen years old and Ted was broken up, so you were alone. You and I were the only members of the family who ever cared about her – and I wasn't there, was I?"

"Well, you were in Azkaban," she said, not very tactfully, and then winced.

But he only smiled. "Thank you ... for what you did."

Tonks remembered the event very well. Her mother had been dead a month when she had received a box from home at Hogwarts, containing some of her mother's old things – thing her father hadn't had the heart to sort out. She had found an album in the box, and although there were many pictures of her mother with friends, the only pictures of the family contained only Andromeda and Sirius. There was one picture with her mother, Sirius, Regulus, Bellatrix and Narcissa – but her mother had been very young then and Regulus barely born.

It was then that she had remembered Uncle Sirius, who had – she thought – had been fond of her mother and liked her better than any of his family, at any rate. So she had thought about what her mother would have wanted, and she had gone to Professor Dumbledore with her unusual request.

He had been startled, but understanding. He had warned her, but she had been determined and he had agreed in the end and somehow managed to pull some strings for her. He had come with her himself to Azkaban prison, kept the Dementors far away so that she didn't have to endure them any more than was strictly necessary, and had waited in a nearby room while she went down the long, dark, stone corridor. It was Sirius's eleventh year in Azkaban. She reached his cell, and saw him sitting on the floor near the bars. His expression upon seeing her had been one of mingled exhaustion and weak stupefaction. Visitors weren't common, and it was perfectly evident that he had never once had a real, unofficial, non-Ministry visitor before in eleven years of imprisonment.

"Who are you?" He had asked, standing up.

She had been slightly daunted by his harsh tone of voice, but decided to make allowances for prison horrors and suspicion. He couldn't have had an easy time ... but if he really had killed those people, he deserved what he was getting.

"I – I don't know if you remember me, Uncle Sirius," she said slowly, "I'm Tonks – I mean, I'm Nymphadora."

He frowned. "Andromeda's kid?"

"Yes."

"Well, no wonder I didn't recognize you! Not only are you a Metamorphmagus, but it's been eleven years since I last saw you." His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Why are you here?"

"I came to tell you Mum is dead."

He had turned sharply. "Andromeda? How?"

"Death Eater."

For a moment, he had said nothing. Tonks had regretted telling him how she had died. After all, he was supposed to be one of You-Know-Who's Death Eaters himself, wasn't he? She sighed.

Then he spoke up: "Why did you come to tell me?"

"I thought you might want to know."

"You came into Azkaban Prison to tell me your mother is dead?"

"You have a problem with that?" she demanded.

Later, when she went to find Dumbledore and he took her out of the prison again and very tactfully didn't ask about her visit, he said something that she would never forget: "You know, Miss Tonks," he said with a smile and twinkling blue eyes, "You would make a splendid Auror."

Now, she smiled to herself as she remembered that. Thanks to Dumbledore, his prophecy had come true, hadn't it? She had achieved her dream of becoming an Auror, and at a very young age, too. Kingsley, she thought proudly, had been twenty-five when he'd become one.

Sirius was watching her intently. "I never did thank you for doing that all those years ago, you know," he said to her with sincerity.

"Well," Tonks shrugged, "You had a right to know."

"No ... I don't mean I'm thanking you for telling me she was dead, although I'm grateful for that as well. I meant, thank you for caring enough about Andromeda to be willing to brave Azkaban and its horrors to come and tell me. I know it couldn't have been easy," he smiled ruefully, "And I don't think I made it any easier on you. You were always a really good kid, Tonks."

"Have I changed?" she laughed.

He chuckled. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

She smiled, and said: "I wish she could have lived to see you freed from Azkaban and could have had the satisfaction of knowing she was right about your innocence all along."

"Oh, she knows," Sirius said reassuringly, smiling. His gaze darkened. "We really were the only ones who cared, weren't we? The rest of the family – damn them to hell – didn't give a damn about her, ever. She was the black sheep – ouch, that was a real pun, wasn't it? She was a disgrace." He pushed his glass away moodily, angrily. "I'm a Black through and through and I hate it."

"Sirius Black, don't you be a wimp!" Tonks said sharply. "You've got to stop hiding from who you are, and being ashamed of facing your heritage. You're a Black yes, but you are not those Blacks up on that tapestry. You're not Aunt Elladora who killed House-elves, you're not your mother ..."

"She produced me, didn't she?"

"The only thing she did right in her lifetime," said Tonks with a grin. "Listen to me, Sirius. We're both Blacks, aren't we? We've both got the blood of this ancient line in our veins. But that doesn't mean we're bad. It only means that we're going to create a new name for Blacks."

Sirius stared at her for a moment. "You can't change generations of bad deeds and fanatical purges and prejudice, Tonks," he said with the voice of a man who is speaking to someone a great deal younger. He refrained from adding 'you'll understand it better when you're older', for which Tonks was grateful because she might have boxed his ears if he had said that. "Two decent Blacks out of thousands are not going to change what our line has done in history – or what people think of us."

"Of course we can," Tonks said with buoyant confidence.

"Tonks – "

"Oh just listen, would you? You're always so wretchedly stubborn. For once in your life, sit still and just listen to me. We'll change it all, Sirius! Can't you see that? We could. We're great people," she said, not very modestly, "Think about it – no one can contradict us anymore. Because it's just you and me – the last of the Blacks. By fighting You-Know-Who and doing what's right, we can make a new name that isn't so black – ah, now it's my turn to start with the puns."

He couldn't help it; he started laughing, and shook his head. "Well, I'll be a hippogriff's uncle," he said wryly, "But you seem to have an idea there, Tonks. To make it a truly noble house of Blacks ... it's going to be tough work and it'll take a long time ... but we could do it."

"We're both young," Tonks added helpfully, and grinned, "Well – at least, I am very young still."

"Thanks," he said wryly, painfully aware of his thirty-four years.

Tonks smiled and had a look in her eyes that could only be described as 'having a vision'. "I think it's a great idea, and it'll give us both something to do when we're bored, you know. Besides, it'll be good," she said with real seriousness now, "To be proud of being a Black, rather than ashamed. There'll be no reason for you to be ashamed of who you are anymore, Sirius."

The Animagus ex-convict stared at his young cousin for a long time, as if seeing her for the first time. A flash of filial affection crossed his features and it was with little humor and genuine wonder that he finally asked Tonks quietly: "How do you understand so well?"

"Blood tells, Sirius," Tonks said with a smile. "Sometimes, blood always has the answers."

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THE END.

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A/N: I wrote this some time ago, but never got around to updating it. Now that I've found and edited it, I think it can be put out on the site. It's just a missing scene from OOTP, dealing with both Sirius and Tonks' ways of facing the crimes of their family. Please review and let me know what you think! Enjoy!