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There had been twelve years of peace. Andromeda had watched her daughter grow up, watched herself and Ted starting to grow old and could almost believe that the past was simply a bad dream. Even when Nymphadora announced her intention to become an auror, her mother was not terribly worried. Of course it was not the career path that any mother would have chosen for their only daughter, especially someone like Andromeda who knew better than most what kind of people were out there. But her daughter had definitely inherited the Black stubbornness so Andromeda barely tried to discourage her child, tried to be supportive and reminded herself that it was safer to be an auror then than it ever had been before…
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The first to escape from Azkaban. If anyone were to manage the impossible it would have been Sirius Black, but of course his cousin had never considered this. It felt horribly familiar, as though the past twelve years had never happened, as she stood there in her cosy kitchen staring down at the Daily Prophet. The past had invaded her home again. In fact this time it had invaded her whole life because Sirius surrounded her; newspapers, posters and whispers on the street. Every mention of his name seemed like an accusation against her, the one who had been taken in by him; desperate to believe she had someone left she could be proud of.
At first she assured herself that he would very quickly to caught, probably within days because she had never seen a man-hunt on this scale before. Sirius always did like to be the centre of attention. Then as days turned to weeks she comforted herself with the knowledge that there had at least been no murders yet and he had not come near her or her family. It was not that she had expected a visit from him but it was still an incredible relief. She was once again trying furiously to reconcile the memories of the boy she knew with the cold hearted killer he was now, trying to put Bella's cruel eyes into his laughing face and make them fit but the picture always looked wrong.
Weeks turned to months. Nymphadora qualified as an auror and Andromeda realised that she would be happier if no one ever heard from Sirius Black again, even if it meant that he would always be out there and always silently haunting her.
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The next summer the rumours began. After the death at the Triwizard tournament people began to suggest that the past was about to repeat itself, that the Dark Lord was rising again. If Andromeda had been left to herself she would rather have buried her head in the sand but the week after Nymphadora came round to dinner and said that she believed the rumours and believed Albus Dumbledore. Ted was always the practical one and pointed out that the Ministry did not take the same view and they were Nymphadora's employers after all. Andromeda felt a chill running through her as Nymphadora admitted that she did not know what to do know, that by the time the Ministry faced up to the truth it could already be too late. Her daughter sounded unusually thoughtful and she did not like it and for nights afterwards she screamed in her sleep as she watched her daughter battling deatheaters. On good days they wore masks and hoods so all she could see of them were their blank eyes, but other times they all wore the face of the Dark Lord's most faithful servant, her favourite cousin.
Ironically the day she learned of Sirius' innocence was the day that her life started to slowly unravel. As their daughter sat before them, explaining Sirius' true story in a nervous voice, Andromeda could tell that Ted had not grasped what Nymphadora was also trying to tell them without actually saying the words. He beamed at his wife, aware of how close she had once been to her cousin and evidently thinking this was the best news they could have received. Andromeda wanted to cry or scream or maybe curse Albus Dumbledore. Her greatest fear had always been her daughter hunting down deatheaters but that was the moment when she learned that it would be the other way round. She could easily have cursed the Order of the Phoenix for putting her child on the frontline of their war.
Instead Andromeda called on her Black upbringing to force the tears from her eyes and simply pulled her daughter close to her. Once more there was no point in protesting. She herself had never done as her mother told her and she cannot ask the brave young woman in her arms not to fight for what she believes in. So she holds her child tight and whispers how proud she is.
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From then on every knock at the door, every owl coming through the kitchen window brought the possibility of something terrible having happened, but once again the next bad news arrived in the form of the newspaper that once more managed to catch Andromeda by surprise. As she stared down at her sister's face the air around her seemed to freeze, choking her and burning against her skin. From that moment something inside her seemed frozen, waiting for the tragedy she just knew was coming.