Andromeda blinked slowly. Rabastan could feel her hands stiffen in his, a little sweat pooling on her palms. She was staring at him with a mixture of incredulity and what looked very much like despair.

"Rab…" she said softly, "what is this? Why are you doing this to me?"

"Doing what to you?" he asked warily. Her tone made it abundantly clear to him that this was not going to go the way that he had wanted it to, that Andromeda – for all the times that she had told him that he was the man she would someday wish to marry – was not taking this proposal well.

"You know how I feel about the Dark Lord, Rab!" she said, and unless Rabastan was very much mistaken, he thought that he could hear a few tears creeping into her voice.

"No, I- I don't," he said, staring at her, perplexed. "I mean… I know that you don't agree with everything that he stands for, but…"

"But nothing!" Andromeda jerked her hands out of Rabastan's and jumped to her feet. "I don't fancy the idea of my Mudblood friends being killed off, Rabastan! They may not be Pureblood, but that's no reason to massacre them!"

"But Andromeda…" Rabastan actually managed to laugh a little, although he was feeling more than a little bit ill, "don't- don't be ridiculous. The Dark Lord isn't going to massacre Mudbloods. Mother and Father talk about him all the time, and they say he's just going to- just going to round a few of them up and get them off the streets. Not Mudbloods like your…" He broke off, hesitant to call them friends. Purebloods were not friends with Mudbloods, not ever, no matter what Andromeda said. It was like saying that a human could be friends with a wild animal – only in fairy tales could it be said to happen.

"My what, Rab?" Andromeda asked, with a bit of venom in her voice. "My what?"

"Your… the Mudbloods at school…" he said, a bit helplessly.

For just a second, Rabastan thought that he might see relief on Andromeda's face, as though she had been expecting him to say something different, something worse, and this came as a relief to her. But almost instantly, her face clouded over again.

"I'm sure that he says he's not going to," she said darkly, "but don't pretend to be stupid, Rab, because I know that you aren't. You know as well as I do that if he keeps gaining power at the rate that he's going at, it's not going to be very long before he decides that it's easier to just kill everyone with any Muggle blood in them…"

"But I don't see why you're worried about that," Rabastan said, a bit exasperated. "I mean, it's not as if any of us could possibly be thought to have Muggle blood, is it? So we're safe… especially if I'm a Death Eater–"

"You're missing my point, Rabastan!" Andromeda said. Her voice rose to a shriek and she looked ready to slap him. "It's not about you, it's not about me, it's not about any Purebloods! I'm not worried about being killed! I'm worried about other people!"

He shrunk away from her, a little disturbed by her vehemence. "But Andromeda–"

"No! No, no 'But Andromeda's!"

Her eyes were wild, and for a moment, Rabastan was quite sure that he was looking at Bellatrix. His heart leapt and he jolted back. Bellatrix in anger was terrifying, but to see her in her little sister was a thousand times worse, because Andromeda had, for so long, been such a calm and stoic force in Rabastan's life. She did not scream at him, she did not rage – even when he deserved it.

"Andi…" he whispered, his voice cracking as he tried to get to the ground, get to his feet so that he could run away if he needed to.

"Don't you Andi me! Why would you do this? Why would you give your- your life to him?"

"I'm not giving my life to him!" Rabastan said, and now he could feel the stirrings of anger in his chest as well. "You act as though I've pledged my soul to him, and that's not what I've done!"

"Isn't it, though?" If he hadn't known her so well, he wouldn't have been able to tell, but he could see in the way her lips were twisting that she was trying with all her might to hold back tears. "What do you know about the Death Eaters, Rabastan? Do you think it's just a job?"

"No," he said, also trying to keep his voice steady and free of both the anger in his chest and the tears now stinging the back of his eyes, "I don't think it's like a job. I think it's like a- like a position. Like… like royalty is a position–"

Andromeda let out a harsh bark of laughter. "Only you, Rab- only a Lestrange would see this as though it's making you into royalty."

He bristled automatically. "Just what do you mean by that?"

"Maybe," Andromeda said, sounding almost hysterical, "just maybe you – and your whole family, while we're at it – ought to stop trying to make yourselves into royalty and work out that it's never going to happen!" She slid off the wall and took a step towards Rabastan, her eyes narrowed and an unusually vindictive sneer upon her face. "Not even if you became a Death Eater…"

"I don't try to make myself into royalty!" he protested.

"Like Hell you don't!" Andromeda shrieked, and now she really did sound hysterical. "That's what this is – that's what this is about – that's what this has always been about! You Lestranges just can't handle the thought that you aren't royalty and you're never going to be royalty, so you're just- you're just hoping that the Dark Lord will give you that status and–"

Rabastan slapped her.

He had never slapped Andromeda before – had never slapped anyone at all, not even a little smack at his brother when they were children – and Andromeda reeled. Her eyes went wide with surprise and though the slap could not have been very hard, for it barely stung Rabastan's hand, she clutched her cheek and let out a short cry of something like dismay.

Rabastan stood frozen for a moment, staring at her. He felt a dull throb go through his palm and looked down at it with an expression almost akin to a belief of betrayal, for that was what he felt. He felt as though his hand had betrayed him by rising up and hitting Andromeda.

Even though she deserved it for what she had been saying about his family.

There was silence between them for a moment, punctuated only by Andromeda's strangled gasps of surprise, and then she found her voice.

"Rabastan Lestrange, how dare you lay a hand on me!" she shouted. He looked up at her and saw tears glazing her eyes. Another pulse went through his hand, and it seemed this time to travel up to his arm and into his chest where the pulse settled like a weight on his heart.

"I'm sorry, Andromeda," he said quietly, but she shook her head, looking positively furious.

"No! I don't care if you're sorry – you hit me!"

"Not hard!" he said defensively, then wished that he hadn't because at that, Andromeda looked a thousand times angrier than before.

"Not hard– do you think that's what it's about?" she screamed at him. "You think you hurt me? Of course that's not it, you useless little- you couldn't ever hurt me, you're not strong enough!"

Rabastan winced.

"But if you think," Andromeda hissed, her voice going low and venomous, "if you think even for a second that I am ever going to look at you like a friend again, you are dead wrong." A triumphant smile curved her lips. "I'll tell Bellatrix that you hit me and she'll tell Rodolphus, and he'll make sure that you're sorted out properly!"

"Don't tell–" Rabastan began, then gave up. He couldn't muster the energy to beg – it was hard enough to stay upright. Slapping Andromeda had drained him in a way that he couldn't understand. He felt weak and dizzy the way he did if he didn't eat enough or take the potions that kept him something resembling healthy.

"I'll tell if I want to!" Andromeda snapped, but Rabastan was no longer listening. He felt wretched, positively wretched, and suddenly his knees were going weak, and…

"Andi, help me," he tried to whisper, but he wasn't sure if the words reached his mouth, or if they went silent in his throat. He could feel himself going numb and tried to reach out to catch hold of Andromeda but before he could be sure whether he did or not, the world had gone black and Rabastan slipped into the merciful oblivion of unconsciousness.