Author's Note: I'm experimenting with writing in another voice, that of Andromeda Tonks. This is supposed to be a series of letters that Andromeda sends to (Nymphadora) Tonks while Tonks is at Hogwarts. It's mostly explaining the Black family heritage to Tonks. Each chapter is another letter. Quite a few more are planned, but it will be a VERY long time before any more come out, if they ever do. Enjoy.
Letter 1
My beloved daughter, what can I tell you? You are growing up; I can see that. You want to know where you came from, where I came from. And I have never told you. It is past time that you had that history, and an explanation for my silence. You have probably heard things here and there about your heritage already: about the misguided notion of purity of blood, about Sirius who betrayed the Potters, about He Who Must Not Be Named and his Death Eaters, about the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black—ah, I have neither said nor written that phrase in such a very long time.
And you have always wondered about your name. I know (did you think you could hide it from your own mother?) that you tell your friends to address you by your surname only. The idea is not without merit. But you cannot forget what you do not yet know, Nymphadora Tonks. That name and half the blood in your veins are your Black heritage. Only when you know that heritage can you choose which parts of it you will keep and which parts you will reject.
So here it is, as accurately as I can tell the story.
I do not choose to cover the entire history of the wizard world, nor even the most central story. But it is the story I know best and I think that the events I have chosen are illustration enough. The central characters are myself and my older sister, Bellatrix Black. You would know of her, if you have heard of her at all, as Bellatrix Lestrange, Death Eater, one of Voldemort's chief supporters. Do not ever ask me to speak of her. But I think she is the best single example of everything that could have been right with the pure-blood wizard world. She had all the strengths, virtues, and values that "proper" pure-bloods value most. And in their place, those strengths are useful and many of those values are valid. Yet by twisting those traits just slightly off the mark she became the most vicious of them all—of us all.
It may disturb you to see the way in which I describe her. It may disturb you to see how close we once were. It certainly disturbs me. But that is the way of evil. The most deadly evil does not announce itself; it slips in when your attention is elsewhere. The most deadly evil does not directly assault your strengths; it converts them. Bellatrix the Death Eater has done many horrifying things, things I dare not even write to you. But it is a grave lesson and you must take it to heart: she began not much different from your or I. It was many, many years before she realized that she had become what she would, in her saner years, have called evil. And by then, she cared not. Some say that she has become a monster. That is not true. She has become a fiend, and the difference is this: a monster does not think. A monster does not look you in the eye and set her ideas against yours in debate. A monster does not speak any human language, but a demon can. You cannot see yourself in a monster. But she who cannot see even a distortion of herself in a fiend, my daughter, is ready to become one.
It is not enough to know that they were wrong. It is not enough to know that they were evil. Nothing is enough as long as you can dismiss them. It is not enough to know what happened. You must know why. It is not enough to know that they lost. You must know how they lost, and how they nearly won. Let everyone else dismiss them as monsters. Let everyone else say the War was an accident, never to be repeated. But you are a Black, my daughter, and you must know the truth.
Your Loving Mother,
Andromeda Black-Tonks