The glorious summer soon passed and it was the start of yet another school year. Narcissa had thrown herself headlong into preparations for her sister's marriage, and she had requested for numerous bridal catalogues. These she studied closely, bookmarking pages for gowns, bouquets and floral arrangements that inspired her. She sent clippings of these to her sister, who was all too happy to let her do the choosing.
However, in the late autumn, rumours began to circulate that Edward Tonks was an impostor without anything to his name. The rumours were solidified when the notoriously reticent Salem Tonks came out to say that the familial branch Edward claimed to descend from had been wiped out years ago in a tragic Portkey accident in Bermuda.
Scandal swiftly broke. It was not enough that Edward Tonks was a fraud. He had absolutely nothing to his name nor was he born of noble blood. The honour of the Black family name had been dragged through the mud by this one Mudblood. There could be no forgiving of what fools he had made of them when he so boldly asked for her hand and they so willingly agreed. Oh the shame! Oh the horror! Oh fie! Here was a devious, scheming man who lusted after the unattainable prize of a daughter of the House of Black. Here was one who could not keep to his natural order in society but had to worm his way up, the stinking, slimy devil of a man. He had wanted to corrupt their pure daughter for his sinful desire and for this he should be punished without mercy.
Things took a turn for the worse when it transpired that Andromeda had not been the foremost victim of this cruel deception. In fact, she soon admitted that she had aided and abetted this fraud, for she truly loved Ted and wanted her family to understand him on equal terms, knowing they would never accept him otherwise. She cited all the times they had laughed appreciatively at the jokes Ted made, or how they admired his intellect or his cunning, the numerous times they called him one of their own, the deep discussions they had about the future of wizarding politics, and how they thought him bright and promising and would entrust him their second daughter in marriage.
This betrayal was too much for Cygnus or Druella to bear. All branches of the Black family soon came out in vehement defence of their victimhood and finally they offered Andromeda an ultimatum—she was to repent and come back into the fold, and she would atone for her sins by marrying a proper pureblood. Failure to do so meant permanent excommunication from the family. All that had defined her as a person up till now she stood to lose, if she so chose to sully herself with this impure breed of humanity.
Andromeda chose Ted.
Narcissa was immediately distraught and was unable to understand her sister's choice. Her perspective had been addled by family propaganda, which sought to assassinate Ted's character, and she also thought her sister weak, for being incapable of making the necessary choice. Narcissa had been brought up with a strong sense of duty to preserve and uphold the name of her family, and it was contrary to everything she had been trained to do. Worse still, she could not find comfort from her cousin nor his paramour.
It was at this point that friction ignited between Fabian and she. Fabian insisted that Andromeda had done nothing wrong and became angry with her for thinking of muggleborns as inferior or less than human. Fabian insisted that her family was at fault and that everything her family did was a misstep. Fabian began to throw around big words like "undermining the validity of the individual" and "unchecked privilege" and "entrenched bigotry" so much so that Narcissa became furious at him and screamed at him for being a cold, uncaring Ravenclaw only too happy to pontificate on other people's misfortune, oblivious to all the emotions at stake.
Fabian, in turn, was extremely infuriated by her accusations of over-intellectualism, declaring that it was the last resort of those with indefensible positions and huffed that if she had any sense in her she would open her eyes to the systematic discrimination faced by the likes of Edward Tonks.
Wailing, Narcissa called to Evan to defend her, but Evan was lost in troubles of his own. His father, in order to defend his sister's honour, had joined the fray of those heaping slander upon slander on Edward, whom Evan found most agreeable on the tour, and it became clearer than ever to him that his father would stand for nothing but the continued purity of the old houses. Evan was increasingly aware of the fact that he was heading ever farther down the path of disappointment to his father. The fact that he was unlikely to bring forth sons of his own started to weigh down on his heart. He knew for certain that his father, who had already found him a disgrace for struggling with his grades, would consider his preference for those of his own gender unnatural and an insult upon the family name. He began to see his future ahead of him—a forced marriage of convenience, followed by loveless reproduction. Was this why his mother had left his father? He wondered if his parents had been forced into marriage and when an heir was perfunctorily produced it was no longer necessary to keep up the pretence of being a couple. He had read of his mother's affairs in the newspaper without comprehending, and back then he believed the accusations of her moral deficiency, her recklessness, her shamelessness. He saw in his future the same vilification his mother received, unless he denied himself everything that was true about him and lived a lie.