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After the war, there are a lot of funerals. Some have bodies to go along with them, some don’t, and Andromeda has to attend far too many of both sorts.
There is no body for Ted’s. His Snatchers who’d caught him hadn’t been terribly concerned about that sort of thing, and all Andromeda had gotten was condolences on Potter Watch. Members of the Order are there, along with most of the members of Ted’s football club. The only family present are Ted’s sisters.
“I never got to say goodbye,” Joan, the older one, tells Andromeda, her voice tremulous. “I wish he’d never learned about magic. He might still be alive.”
Andromeda doesn’t disagree. She nods silently, past the point of tears.
“Oh, come on,” Anna, the younger sister, says. “That isn’t fair. Magic was a part of him. He lived his life the way he chose, and we should all try for at least that.” She hugs Andromeda. “He loved you so much,” she adds. “Thank you.”
Andromeda can only hug her in return.
Lupin’s funeral is next. His parents are gone, so Harry (or perhaps Hermione) does most of the organizing. It’s well attended, to Andromeda’s faint surprise, by many of his former students and fellow werewolves.
She really aught to have tried harder to get to know him, she thinks ruefully as tribute after tribute is given about what a good teacher he had been and how supportive he was after first-time transformations.
She should have accepted Dora’s choices while she was alive to appreciate it, tried to understand her better, tried to understand what she’d seen in Lupin at all. But she hadn’t, and now she never can.
No one here seems to think any less of her. They give her their well-wishes and pass Teddy around, oohing over his adorable turquoise—now pink—hair. But none of them are her family, and she goes home even more distraught than when she left.
It’s this, perhaps, that has her sitting at the table after she’s put Teddy to bed, nursing a glass of Ted’s favorite Muggle wine, quill in hand. Dora’s funeral is tomorrow, and she can’t…can’t do it entirely alone again.
Dear Narcissa,
My daughter’s funeral is tomorrow. Please come.
She doesn’t sign it. She scrawls the time and venue at the bottom and sends it off with Billy, the old family owl.
Narcissa doesn’t come to the service, isn’t there for the refreshments. Andromeda hadn’t expected her to. The eulogy is read, the casket is buried, and Andromeda lingers as Order members and Aurors and what she guesses might be an old girlfriend all leave their flowers.
Dora had never mentioned a girlfriend.
“We weren’t together very long,” the woman explains. “Just during seventh year. It wasn’t serious, mostly just a lot of fooling around. But she meant the world to me, and…” She cries.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Andromeda manages, clasping her hand.
And then she’s all alone. Harry had offered to take Teddy for the afternoon, and she’d readily agreed.
There are sunflowers and lilies and fanged pansies with drooping heads, unusually subdued. Andromeda gazes at them and lets the tears fall. She’s not sure how long she’s been standing there when she feels a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“I got your invitation.”
Andromeda doesn’t look up. “Thank you for coming, then.”
“If you didn’t want me here, then why send one?” Narcissa walks between Andromeda and Dora’s grave, blocking her view of the flowers. She’s dressed in black, her hair perfectly sleek down her back. Her face is smooth and guileless, and Andromeda has no idea what she’s thinking.
“I needed someone here,” she admits, turning away. “Someone that was family. My options are rather limited these days.”
Narcissa sighs. “I’m only here because I knew you didn’t expect it. I’m so sorry about Nymphadora.”
“And Ted?” Andromeda snaps. “How about him?”
“What do you want me to say?” Narcissa retorts. “If I do say I’m sorry about him, you won’t believe me.”
“That’s true,” Andromeda allows. “But it would still be nice to hear.”
“Fine. I’m sorry for your loss. I know he meant enough to you to abandon me.”
“Abandon you?”
Narcissa flushes. “You left me alone when I needed you! I’ve resented you ever since —"
“Oh, is that it?” Andromeda’s hand inches toward her wand. “It’s always about you, isn’t it? You betrayed the Dark Lord just to keep your perfect little Pureblood family together, after all.”
The fanged pansies are crying rustling flower sobs. Andromeda has never thought of them as truly aware of their surroundings, but here they are. She pats one gingerly, and it doesn’t even try to bite her.
“If he’d won, I could never have spoken to you again,” Narcissa says. “I’ve missed you—kept trying to convince myself you weren’t worth it—even if you haven’t missed me.”
Missed. Resented. What is the difference for Narcissa? Andromeda doesn’t bother to ask.
“Look. I know you never meant to be disowned, but you had to have expected it. I just…” Narcissa trails off.
“I thought Dad might support me,” Andromeda admits, heavily. “I thought they’d love me enough. And then…they didn’t, and I felt so betrayed.” She’d said as much to Ted once, and he’d done his best to comfort her. But she could tell he felt guilty and never brought it up again.
“I wish I could have known my niece,” Narcissa goes on. “I ran into her in Diagon Alley once. She said hi to me. I… I didn’t respond.”
“Well, I’d say that was your choice, so don’t bother crying to me about it.”
Narcissa shakes her head. “I’m not. Do you see me crying? I just…wanted you to know. I could have tried, and now I can’t.”
Narcissa conjures a bouquet of pink roses and rests it beside the others.
Thinking of Dora’s Hogwarts girlfriend, Andromeda can relate. “You don’t appreciate the chances you have until they’re gone.”
“Exactly.”
“So what do you want from me? Forgiveness? You haven’t spoken to me in eighteen years.”
Narcissa lowers her head. “I know. I’m trying now, Andromeda. Please give me a chance.” With that, she strides away. Andromeda stares after her.
*
She receives an invitation by disgruntled eagle owl during breakfast a fortnight after the incident at Dora’s funeral. Narcissa’s neat handwriting is unmistakable on the roll of parchment.
“Should I open it, Teddy?” she asks as he kicks happily in his high chair, cooing and mouthing at her teaspoon. Taking it as a yes, she breaks the seal with a tap of her wand.
Bellatrix’s funeral, it says. Thursday, 23 May at the Malfoy estate in Wilkshire.
Tasteless, Andromeda thinks. That house should be shut up permanently, considering all the horrors that had taken place there. But Narcissa had won some sort of reprieve because of her last-minute betrayal and so got to keep the house and everything in it that wasn’t deemed dangerous or pertinent to prosecutions.
Andromeda scoops up Teddy and carries him to his playpen, leaving the invitation to curl on the table. Bellatrix had killed Dora, they told her. How can she possibly go?
And yet Bella is her sister as much as Narcissa is. How can she stay away?
She doesn’t bother with flowers. And by the look of the unmarked spot of ground where Bella’s been interred, Narcissa hadn’t, either. There isn’t even much of a service, just Narcissa standing alone, giving a eulogy that no one has shown up to hear. And it’s less of a eulogy and more of a recounting of Bella’s crimes. Narcissa cries through all of it, but her voice hardly trembles.
“You were her favorite, you know,” Narcissa murmurs beside Andromeda as she looks down at Bella’s desolate grave. “After Mum and Dad disowned you, she got wilder and took the Mark within a week. She never had any time for me.”
“She loved him,” Andromeda says.
“The Dark Lord?”
Andromeda nods.
“Who knows with her. He was everything to her. I didn’t dare ask if it was love, but it must’ve been.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Andromeda rasps. “They’re both dead and can’t hurt anyone else. Can’t tear any more families apart.”
The truth is, Bella had been Andromeda’s favorite, too. They pranked their cousins together, dressed baby Narcissa in their mother’s finest robes and then hid to wait out their punishment together.
“I miss her,” Narcissa says, then then cries in earnest, her face blotchy and shoulders shaking. Andromeda hesitates only for a moment, then puts an arm around her shoulders and draws her close.
“I miss the girl I remember. We never spoke after I was disowned.”
“We’re the only people that will mourn her, aren’t we?” Narcissa hiccups.
Andromeda doesn’t know that she herself is mourning. Dora, her pride and joy, is dead because of her, and she can’t help a sense of…relief. She doesn’t express these thoughts to Narcissa, but by the way Narcissa is now studying her, she suspects she already knows.
“You know,” Andromeda muses, “If not for the Dark Lord, Bella may have been a vigilante sort in her own right.”
Narcissa gives a watery laugh. “She wanted to be memorable.”
Memorable. That is certainly a word for it. “If she wanted to be memorable, she could have done so much better. She was brilliant. She—”
“We should get together somewhere that isn’t a funeral,” Narcissa interrupts, a little hesitant. “If you want, that is.”
Andromeda gives Narcissa’s shoulders a final squeeze and pulls away. “I do want, I think. We have to start somewhere.”
They leave Bella’s grave and walk together to the Apparition point. The weight of decades still hangs between them. It probably always will.