Disclaimer: Until that day...these people ain't mine.

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The rain poured down like all hell. She paced back and forth through the kitchen, glancing out the large picture window every now and then through slitted eyes, infused with anguish and worry. She tried sitting down at the table but could not, finding she could not settle until she knew...until she had confirmed...

He hadn't been home for days now. It was nearing the seventh day, marking of a week, and still she wondered, what had become of her husband? Was it someone else, or had he...she shuddered at the thought of either. Maybe he'd gotten lost! After all, she knew in her heart Ted Tonks would never die before his time-and yet he would be willing to do that before go with another woman. She paced back and forth, that rain still pounding.

A little girl with short off-blonde hair and hazel eyes came down the staircase, dragging an oversized teddy bear behind her. Andromeda turned to look at her daughter, and gave a shy smile, knowing that her eyes and hair, and the bear, had been inherited from her father. People were not even be able to make an association between mother and daughter, they looked so different. With the slight exception of the noses-they were, in a way, similar. But the girls' nose seemed to always be changing, these past days- the days since she last saw her father. The woman shook her head, imagining that her daughter's physical alterations were due to her missing her father. With shaking arms, the mother picked up her daughter, and embracingly carried her up the steps, softly cooing, "Daddy will be home soon, darling...Daddy will be home."

"Papa! Papa!" there were tears in her eyes now, and it was too much for her to take. Arms still quivering, she placed the girl in her bed, and with a good-night kiss, turned and left for her own down the hall.

That night, the young girl had dreams. Not necessarily nightmares, just-dreams. Oddly familiar, they were something she could recognize but not quite recall. This time, she dreampt of an open field, dark, dark, darker than anything known to man. From it issued unearthly gasps and suspires, Hellish wailings. They were looking for something...desperately. She felt a sudden surge of such emotion she had not felt in her life, never. She was there, crying with the thing, in that field, sharing its pain, its searching, its longing...

She woke with a spectral scream.