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Andromeda can think of only a few times in her life where her nerves have genuinely got the better of her. Most of these occasions have, naturally, revolved around Ted - he’s always had the uncanny ability to make her feel rather neurotic and out of sorts - but today, Ted has been banished from the house. And while she might claim that he’s been banished for his own safety, in reality it was because she wanted at least a fighting chance of keeping her wits about her during this most delicate of encounters.

But it seems as though her wits have apparated themselves to Macclesfield along with her husband and her daughter, because Andromeda feels as though she has spent the greater part of the day in a state of skittishness and fussiness disturbingly reminiscent of her mother.

She has spent the hours since Ted took Nymphadora to his parents’ house marching between the rooms of their cottage, straightening picture frames and plumping cushions and willing the radiator pipes to stop clanking. The hearth seems to need to be swept free of soot over and over again, the kitchen floor seems to be producing crumbs at a rate hitherto unknown to wizardkind, and if she didn’t know better she might think that the chimney and the worktops were conspiring to keep her home in a state of disarray not seen since Ted’s shopping sprees in the run-up to Nymphadora’s birth.

Nothing Andromeda knows about Sirius - either from what she remembers of him or from what she has been told of him since her detachment from The Family - suggests that he will care about crumbs or soot or sagging cushions. Nothing she knows about sixteen-year-olds in general (which is very little, she must admit) suggests that any teenage boy would care about such things as neatness and tidiness, but Andromeda has tried so hard to learn how to keep a home despite being raised to be waited on by a legion of house-elves that she is not about to give up now.

She cannot rest. Ted has left her with the crossword and a silly little romance novel he rather cheekily picked up for her from the mobile library but she cannot rest. She sweeps and plumps and sweeps and straightens and sweeps and dusts and every time she looks at the clock it is as though no time has passed at all. She thinks about having yet another cup of tea and freezes, one hand on the kettle.

What do teenage boys drink?

What do teenage boys who have just left their home and their family and who have every right to hate her for doing the exact same thing and leaving him behind all those years ago…

What does Sirius drink?

It seems ridiculous to expect him to drink tea. If he were his brother, certainly - though Andromeda suspects that Regulus would turn his nose up at the modern kettle she uses and question the quality of the local water source and faint in horror at the sight of the muggle tea bags that Ted prefers. But as a child, Sirius would always proclaim that tea was prissy. She cannot give him coffee, though - it seems irresponsible to give coffee to a teenager. She will not give him wine; she is not her mother, no matter what her nerves today might suggest. She cannot give him the milk that she forces her daughter to drink a glass of every morning and every night, because she will come across like some sort of mollycoddling mother hen. And if she gives him water, he will think her poor at best and puritanical at worst.

She ought to have asked Ted to fetch a crate of butterbeer on his way home last night. They don’t keep any in the house any more, not after Nymphadora managed to use an admittedly impressive piece of underage magic to pop the corks of four bottles and down them before either of her parents could realise. Andromeda had not found it a pleasant experience to try to explain why, exactly, her child was hiccoughing like a house-elf to the Healer-in-Charge at St Mungo’s that evening.

Perhaps she might just have enough time to nip along to the village shop to see if they have something a teenager might find palatable. She glances at the clock again - she’ll be risking it, if she does go; Mrs Hicklin always wanders down the lane around this time to pick up a cake or some biscuits for her grandchildren coming home from their after-school club and she’ll insist on telling Andromeda every morsel of gossip that has crossed her doorstep since she last saw her and badger her for a crumb in exchange, too, and—

There’s a knock at the door.

Andromeda stops havering in the middle of the living room and spins towards the sound.

It’s an unusual, rhythmic sort of knock. It’s neither hesitant nor shy, as one might expect, but a knock that is sure of itself. It’s a knock that announces itself; sets itself apart from other more ordinary knocks.

Andromeda wishes that she felt as sure of herself as that knock did.

She takes a deep breath in an attempt to steady herself and walks to the front door, pausing briefly to smooth her hair and school her expression in front of the hallway mirror.

She opens the door, and the first thought that pops into her head is that Sirius looks an awful lot like his mother.

It’s terrible of her to think so, she knows. Besides the obvious fact that no teenager has ever wished to look like their mother - much less a mother as unmotherly as Walburga Black - Sirius has obviously taken specific and considered measures to try to distance himself as much as possible from any potential familial resemblance.

There are the muggle clothes, of course: denim and leather, despite the warmth of the day, and some sort of lurid t-shirt his brother wouldn’t be seen dead in. There’s the cigarette dangling from his lips and the way his wand is shoved indiscriminately behind his ear. There are the dark smudges around his eyes and the chipped colour on his nails. There’s the slouching posture, the ripped jeans, the untied boot laces, the familiar lopsided smile - but no matter what he wears or how he presents himself, there can be no hiding that jaw or those cheekbones or those bright grey eyes.

‘Alright?’ he asks.

She bites the inside of her cheek.

He’s taller, too. Not as tall as she is - yet - but about twice as tall as he was the last time she saw him. She doesn’t know why this bothers her as much as it does; doesn’t know why she hasn’t expected him to grow, to change, to mature. He’s almost a man, now. Almost as old as she was when she decided to leave behind everything she knew in search of a future filled with love and hope.

He takes a drag of his cigarette and she jerks back to civility.

‘Dispose of that before you come in,’ she says abruptly, gesturing to the cigarette before she turns her back and retreats into her home, her sanctuary, and tries to compose herself before she can start weeping or something even more embarrassing and pitiful.

‘You still look like her, y’know,’ Sirius calls after her.

Her heart lodges itself in her throat. ‘Oh?’

The front door slams shut. Andromeda’s palm tingles as the protective runes she and Ted and Alphard have placed on it automatically reconfigure themselves. Sirius emerges once more; he hovers in the doorway between the living room and the hall with his hands in his pockets and his hair in his eyes.

‘Bella,’ he says. ‘You still look like Bella.’

Andromeda swallows.

It’s been years since anyone has dared - or cared - to say her sister’s name in her presence. Years.

She thinks about Bellatrix constantly. Not because she wants to, particularly, but because she must. She cannot sleep without triple-checking that every door in the cottage is locked, that every window is secured, that every protective rune and spell and plant and amulet surrounding her home and her family and her heart is as strong as it can possibly be. She cannot make it through the day without stitching runes of protection into the hems and cuffs and collars of her husband’s shirts, her daughter’s dresses; without scanning every letter and parcel they receive for potential dangers; without testing every item of food they buy for poison.

She knows it is too much. She knows, too, that it is not enough. If every Black is born with a stubborn streak, then Bella’s is the strongest and most resilient of them all. Andromeda knows it is only a matter of time before her big sister comes for her and for Ted and for Nymphadora; the only thing she can do is make sure they are all prepared for her when she does.

But Sirius’s presence here, in her home, does more than remind Andromeda of what she has left behind and what she risks every day that she keeps her daughter breathing.

Sirius’s presence reminds her of two dark, curly-haired girls doting over and teasing their little blonde sister in equal measures. Two girls, leaving their little sister to be fussed over by Granny and Grandpa, running for freedom through lavender fields, splashing through weedy brooks, collecting frogspawn and weaving dandelion crowns and climbing tall, rough-barked trees, never caring if they muddied their knees or ripped their robes or disarrayed their hair because they knew who they were, what they were; knew that they were brilliant, unstoppable, irrepressible.

Romy and Bella: inseparable. Until they were.

‘Nice house,’ Sirius says, as though five years in Gryffindor and twice as long rebelling against his parents are still not long enough to destroy the manners he was raised with. ‘Is this Nymphadora?’

He’s crossed the room and is studying the picture frames on the mantlepiece. Andromeda swallows her memories, buries them back inside the chest she’s kept them locked in for years, and joins him.

He smells different. He no longer smells of his mother’s potent perfume and the odd, too-bitter tang of the magic that seeped from every wall of his childhood home. He smells like clean air and freshly-mown grass and old leather.

He smells, faintly, of wet dog.

‘Yes,’ she tells him. ‘That’s Nymphadora.’

‘Alphard told me she’s a metamorphmagus,’ Sirius says, glancing up and catching Andromeda off-guard again with his too-bright, too-Walburga eyes.

‘Yes.’

‘Grandfather always said it was in our blood,’ he muses, ‘but I thought it was just another one of those stupid boasts he used to make to impress the other old gits.’

‘Perhaps it’s not in our blood. Perhaps it came from Ted’s side.’

Sirius grins. ‘That’ll be it, yeah.’ He looks back at the photograph. ‘What can Nymphadora do?’

’Too much,’ Andromeda says, swallowing down a weary sigh before it can escape her throat.

His grin widens. ‘Is she here?’

‘No. Ted took her to see his parents after school.’

‘Muggle school?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cool,’ he says, and if his smile grows any wider Andromeda thinks it’s liable to take over his entire face.

She has to look away; it’s too bright, too dazzling, too familiar. Instead, she watches out of the corner of her eye as Sirius turns back to the mantlepiece. He brushes his hand over the tops of the assortment of different-sized and different-shaped frames that are gathered there until he stops and takes a sharp intake of breath.

‘Where did you get this?’ he asks, demands, his voice tight as he picks up the brass frame.

He’s holding a photograph of himself and Regulus standing in front of the family tapestry. They’re wearing their school uniforms and they look so young; the photograph was taken in commemoration of Regulus starting his first year at Hogwarts, so he would have just turned eleven and Sirius would be twelve. They look so young, and so desperate.

Andromeda remembers how amazed she felt when Alphard brought her the photograph - amazed at the difference in the boys’ expressions and postures since the last time she’d seen them, just a few years before. Regulus seemed to have become more withdrawn, more anxious; the photograph version of him kept fiddling with his sleeves and looking up at his brother, as if for reassurance. Whether Sirius gave him what he was seeking in real life, Andromeda didn’t know, but he gave him none in the photograph: he was too busy feigning boredom and disinterest, but Andromeda would bet many, many things that what he kept glancing at, just out of frame, what his eyes kept flickering to, was his mother.

‘Alphard gave it to me,’ she tells him. ‘I believe it’s a copy of the one your mother sent around the family.’

Sirius huffs. ‘Reg looks like a pillock,’ he declares, and drops the photograph back onto the mantlepiece.

Andromeda straightens the frame as Sirius continues his inspection and forces herself to hold back a sigh. What she would have given to have her own younger sibling dote on her as Regulus has always doted on Sirius…

‘This is Ted?’ he asks, pointing to a large photograph, one of the few from their wedding day, tucked behind a picture of Nymphadora on her first broomstick.

‘Yes,’ she says softly.

And despite herself, she smiles. She cannot help it, not when she looks at that photograph and sees the relief and the joy and the love that pours out of her and Ted’s faces. She’d been convinced that something would happen to stop the ceremony from taking place - an intervention from her family or, less likely though infinitely more hurtful, from his.

But it hadn’t. They’d been free. They are free.

‘Ted was Quidditch Captain, wasn’t he?’ Sirius asks.

‘For Hufflepuff, yes.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘How did you know?’

‘James plays for Gryffindor and we won the Cup this year,’ he tells her, and she bites back a smile at the way he puffs his chest out slightly and stands a little taller as he reveals this information about his friend. ‘Ted’s name is on it. All the winning Captains’ are.’

Andromeda’s mind drifts away to the stack of school mementos she’s kept hidden away in a box on the top of her wardrobe. There are some photographs of Ted playing Quidditch and posing with the Cup and his teammates there, she knows - she’s kept them deliberately, protected from dust and mildew and anything else she could think of with layers of enchantments, because she never wants to forget how fit he looked in his Quidditch uniform.

‘He was Head Boy too, wasn’t he?’ Sirius asks, casting her a sidelong glance.

‘He was.’

Somehow.

‘I always knew you’d go for a swotty one,’ he says rather superciliously.

‘Keepers are swots, are they?’ she says, though she doesn’t know why she feels the need to defend her adult husband to a teenager.

‘Head Boys are swots.’

She huffs. ‘Ted did many unswotty things as Head Boy, Sirius. Trust me. I was there for most of them.’

Sirius stares at her for a moment then pretends to vomit into her fireplace.

‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

When she returns to the living room, Andromeda finds that Sirius has made himself at home on her settee and has one of her photo albums open and splayed across his lap.

‘You both look really happy,’ he says, glancing up at her as he points to another wedding portrait.

‘We were. We still are.’

She smiles softly and hands him a cup of tea; his lack of complaint or eye-roll suggests that his views on tea have changed since he was a child.

‘What was it like?’ he asks. ‘Your wedding?’

Unexpectedly perfect, she thinks. She spent much of her teens dreading her inevitable future marriage; after Bellatrix’s farce, their mother’s desperation to have at least one daughter marry properly led to near-constant descriptions of ‘eligible young bachelors’ and suggestions of suitable gowns and suitable venues and suitable flower arrangements and countless other things that Andromeda has never and will never express any interest in whatsoever.

She was happy to marry Ted, of course. She itched to throw off the shackles of her old surname and take his, instead, to become bound to him in name and vow and heart and blood, to form a new family, a better family, a family that she chose for herself.

But the ceremony was something she awaited with dread.

She assumed that Ted’s parents would be like hers - a foolish notion, since how could parents like hers have ever shaped someone as selfless and empathetic and good as Ted? But they were wonderful. Exactly what she needed. They never pretended to understand her situation - how could they? - but they tried their best to listen to her when she needed it, distract her when she needed it, leave her alone when she needed it.

They didn’t make a fuss when she and Ted told them that they wanted a small wedding - an elopement, really - just Ted’s immediate family and their most trusted friends. If they were disappointed that they wouldn’t have the opportunity to show off their wealth and superior taste, to flaunt their only child, as Andromeda’s own parents thought were the purposes of weddings, they hid it, kept it to themselves, didn’t allow their disappointment to cloud their son and daughter-in-law’s happiness or choices. They merely wished them well and sent them off with an outrageously expensive (and delicious) bottle of muggle champagne.

‘It was a quiet wedding,’ Andromeda tells Sirius, ‘as you can probably see from the photographs.’

‘Did Alphard go?’

She shakes her head and takes a sip of tea.

‘Why not?’ Sirius asks.

‘We decided that it would be too dangerous.’

He huffs. ‘I’d’ve thought it’d be worth the risk.’

And I pray that that, she thinks, will not be your downfall.

‘Alphard has always walked a very fine line between doing what he thinks is right and what the family thinks is right,’ she explains. ‘It wouldn’t be worth risking all that he has achieved, just for a wedding.’

‘Not a wedding. Your wedding.’

‘My wedding was no more important than anyone else’s.’

‘It should’ve been to him,’ Sirius says. ‘He went to Cissa’s,’ he adds, wrinkling his nose.

‘And he went to Bellatrix’s, too. We all did.’

‘At least Bella’s was over quickly,’ he grumbles. ‘Cissa’s went on for days. And it was on the hottest day of the year but Mother still made us wear those stupid suffocating robes. I thought I was going to melt, Romy.’

She looks away. ‘I’m sure the food was pleasant, at least.’

‘It was disgusting and poncy. Reg loved it.’

Andromeda is forced to hide her smile behind her teacup.

‘Malfoy’s a prick,’ Sirius adds with a scowl. ‘Reg reckons he’s got nice manners or some crap but I don’t know what the rest of them see in him.’

Money, Andromeda knows. Narcissa and Lucius began courting while they were all still at school, years before Andromeda chose Ted. She knows that her parents considered it a great coup and encouraged it as much as humanly possible: she remembers how her father crowed about joining the Black family’s heritage and ancient power with the Malfoy family’s wealth to create a dynasty for the modern era.

‘At least you didn’t have to go to school with him,’ Andromeda says lightly.

‘I hope Ted gave him a thousand detentions.’

She cannot hide her smile, this time. ‘Unfortunately, Ted only received those powers after Lucius had finished school.’

Sirius huffs and slumps slightly in his seat; Andromeda allows herself another smile as she imagines how her little cousin must have battled to stop his mother from dashing such slovenly posture out of him.

‘When you left Hogwarts,’ Sirius says, turning to her with a small frown between his brows, his fingers fiddling with the edge of the photo album, ‘did you go to Oxford?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I remember you always said you were going to go to Oxford. To study, instead of settling for marriage to some poxy wizard.’ He gives her a sly grin. ‘But I can’t remember if you actually went or not, in all the fuss over your disappearance. And your marriage.’

‘Yes,’ she says stiffly. ‘I went to Oxford.’

‘What did you study?’

‘Why, are you thinking of applying?’

He snorts. ‘God, no. I’m not a swot. Reg probably will, though.’ He sniffs and glances away. ‘If they let him.’

‘Alphard tells me that Regulus is clever,’ Andromeda says quietly.

Regulus was always the more diligent of the brothers, she remembers. She never heard of Regulus hiding in the attic to avoid his lessons or bullying his tutor into giving him less homework or doing the opposite of essentially everything that anyone ever asked him to do, as Sirius always did. She would often stumble across Regulus reading quietly in the library, or sitting beside his father and practising his letters, or practising his fractions using eggs and mushrooms and leaves with Kreacher. She could never tell whether he was particularly intelligent, though, or just desperate to please.

‘I s’pose he’s not always a complete idiot,’ Sirius says, shrugging. ‘He has to work, though.’

Andromeda rolls her eyes. ‘We all have to work, Sirius.’

‘I don’t,’ he says, rather smugly.

She hums.

‘I don’t,’ he insists. ‘I didn’t even know where the library was until McGonagall made me do detention there.’

‘How impressive. I am very impressed.’

‘Whatever.’ He huffs. ‘So, what did you study at Oxford? Or is it some great secret?’

‘I matriculated at the School of Natural Philosophy,’ she tells him, fingertips skimming around the rim of her teacup as she recalls how nervous she had been, how thrilled. ‘My focus was on Alchemy and Transfiguration.’

‘Oh,’ Sirius says dismissively. ‘So you’re a swot swot.’

‘Thank you,’ she says primly.

‘Are you an alchemist, then?’ he asks, looking around the living room as though he might find an athanor hidden beneath the coffee table.

‘No.’

‘Oh. What do you do?’

‘I dabble,’ she says, ‘in this and that.’

‘Oh.’

He sounds as disappointed as everyone else sounds, when they discover that Andromeda Black - the brightest witch in her year, the witch who achieved the highest marks in every class and left Hogwarts with armfuls of N.E.W.T.s and an acceptance letter to Linford College, Oxford and a glittering future ahead of her - has become Andromeda Tonks, mother and housewife and occasional village herbalist.

But just as she cannot reveal the truth to the others, to her former classmates, her former friends, so too she must hide it from Sirius.

She cannot tell him how it was only due to her perseverance and the indomitable will of her Alchemy professor that she managed to battle her way through Oxford and come out with a middling degree at all. She cannot tell him how she has been rejected by every journal she has submitted research to, turned away from every alchemist she has applied for an apprenticeship with, dismissed by every apothecary and herbalist and charmsmith in Europe.

She cannot tell him that her intelligence and her intellectual curiosity and her work ethic and her determination, desperation to achieve something of note mean precisely nothing in the face of the Black family’s wrath. She cannot tell him just how long and how deep the reach of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black is; she cannot tell him how far-reaching the consequences of her turning her back on the family have been, because he is so young and so recently divorced from them and she wants him to enjoy this moment, this freedom, wants him to be hopeful for his future, not bitter about it before it has even begun.

‘And Ted?’ Sirius asks. ‘What does Ted do?’

Too much, she thinks. Edward Tonks does too much and damns the consequences.

She has felt the stirrings of war for longer than her husband has been aware of the wizarding war’s existence. She has been privy to her father’s political and pecuniary ambitions since she was able to understand what the word ‘power’ meant; she knew, for as long as she can remember, that a battle for control of wizarding Britain was coming and that when it did, her family would not just be at the heart of it but on the frontlines, too.

And because she has had this knowledge whispering at the back of her mind for her entire life, she fears what is to come more than Ted does, too.

Ted still doesn’t know what her family are truly capable of. Ted still doesn’t know the lengths to which they will go to hurt her, their lost daughter, to pay her back for what she has done and to gain vengeance for how she has humiliated them.

No matter how often and how explicitly she tries to explain and to warn him about their capabilities, she can see in his eyes that his heart is too good to understand. He doesn’t believe that her family will kill their daughter if they ever find the opportunity. Despite everything Andromeda has told him, he still believes they are too human, too humane, to sink to such depths.

‘Ted works for a charity,’ she tells Sirius.

He seems surprised; Andromeda supposes he has never encountered a charity worker before. Charity workers do not tend to mix in the same circles as the Black family, after all.

‘What sort of charity?’ he asks.

She sighs. ‘Does it matter?’

Sirius shrugs a shoulder and picks at the leather cover of the photo album. ’S’pose not,’ he says rather sullenly. ‘Sorry for expressing an interest in your husband’s life.’

‘He works for a muggle-born charity,’ she says begrudgingly. He perks up, opens his mouth, and before he can ask her any more questions she rushes to say, ‘What do you wish to do in the future, if you are set against university?’

‘Dunno,’ he says. ‘Fight.’

Why are the wizards in her life so keen to throw their lives away? Why does no one around her seem to possess even a single shred of self-preservation? Why does it always fall to her to restrain their impulses, to protect them, to keep them safe?

She doesn’t understand. What Ted does is dangerous enough. What he risks every day by giving muggle-born families the tools and resources and assistance they need to protect themselves and their homes is enough. It should be enough. He shouldn’t feel the need to do more when he does so much already and she could curse the idiotic colleague who hinted to Ted about a secret organisation, the organisation rumoured to be spear-headed by Dumbledore, because Ted no longer thinks that what he does is enough.

Ted now wishes to join the fight in earnest.

‘That would be rather foolish of you,’ she tells Sirius.

He straightens his posture. ‘I don’t think that fighting to protect people from twats like Malfoy is foolish, actually.’

Andromeda closes her eyes.

She has spent so many nights in vigil, creeping between her daughter’s bedroom and the bedroom she shares with her husband, watching them as they sleep, counting their breaths as their chests rise and fall, touching her palm to their hearts to feel their pulses, listening to their snores and their murmurs and hoping that their dreams are more pleasant than her own.

She has spent so many nights dreading the thought of Ted betraying her trust and the promise he made her and going to face her sisters and her peers on the battlefield. He is brilliant in so many ways, but he is not a fighter: he will not be able to defend himself against her family, her flesh and blood. She cannot bear the thought of having to identify his body and the curse that killed him, knowing all the while that it was someone whose blood she shares who cast the fatal blow.

Sirius is so young. Andromeda doesn’t know if he has a talent for duelling but it doesn’t matter, he is too young, far too young, to be thinking about raising a wand against his cousins and his uncles. And potentially his brother, too.

She cannot risk losing him as well as Ted. Especially not when he is finally free, when he finally has a chance of happiness.

‘You would be better to stay out of it,’ she says quietly. ‘Keep well away from it all, Sirius.’

‘I knew you were a Slytherin but I didn’t realise you were such a coward, too.’

His voice is cold - so like his mother’s. His words sting.

‘I have fought, Sirius,’ she retorts. ‘I have suffered. And now I have more than myself to think about: I have a daughter and a husband, both of whom are bigger targets than they otherwise would have been, by virtue of being connected to me. If I am a coward for wanting to protect them from the likes of Lucius and Bellatrix, then so be it. Label me as such. I care about nothing but keeping my family alive.’

He stares at her for a moment. Glares at her. She stares right back, refusing to back down.

In the hallway, the cuckoo clock strikes the hour and Sirius flinches. The hard, cold flint in his gaze melts away and is replaced with a flash of fear. Andromeda softens, watching his cheeks colour as he rights himself, glances over his shoulder, scratches his ear.

‘Sounded like the one at Grimmauld Place,’ he mumbles, darting a glance her way. ‘Always hated that ugly fucking thing.’

She berates herself for not noticing it sooner. She sees now, all to clearly, the nervousness in his movements: his fidgeting hands, his bouncing knee, his darting glances. She should have noticed his too-pale skin and his too-dark eyes, signs that he, too, has been struggling to sleep and struggling to cope with the enormity of his decisions. She shouldn’t have risen to the bait of his challenges - challenges raised in an attempt to mask his nerves and his fears.

She should have noticed because in many ways it is like looking at a younger version of herself. She should have noticed because she is the only other person alive who has been in Sirius’s position and knows the galaxy of emotions that Sirius must be feeling right now.

‘Stupid, ugly clock,’ Sirius says, glancing over his shoulder again. ‘Mother only kept it because Alphard gave it to her. Which is fucking ridiculous because she’s always hated him.’

‘Has she tried to contact you since you left?’ Andromeda asks quietly. ‘Your mother?’

‘No.’ His jaw twitches. ‘Has yours?’

‘Yes.’

More than once has Andromeda received an unwanted letter from Druella. More than twice. In fact, she has received so many of her mother’s letters, gossip columns, and entreaties, that she has lost count of them.

She doesn’t know if Druella knows that Narcissa writes to her, too - or if Narcissa knows that their mother writes.

Andromeda has never responded to either of them.

‘Must be nice,’ Sirius says, bitterness tingeing his voice. ‘Must be nice to know that someone cares enough to make the effort.’

‘Not particularly.’

Sirius falls quiet and turns his glare to the window. Andromeda drinks the last of her now-lukewarm tea and thinks about her mother, about Sirius’s mother.

If she’s honest, she didn’t give Druella much thought when she was deliberating her decision to leave, nor in the immediate aftermath of having left. She and her mother have never seen eye to eye: Druella never seemed to want to understand why Andromeda cared so much about books and exams and so little about dresses and balls, and Andromeda didn’t care to understand why Druella couldn’t just leave her alone and let her be happy.

Druella never factored into any of Andromeda’s calculations about whether she should stay and endure, or leave and be free. Druella had no place in Andromeda’s pros and cons lists, her carefully worked out Arithmantic tables, or even her hastily drawn tarot cards read by candlelight in a toilet cubicle in the Slytherin bathroom. Andromeda simply lumped Druella in with the wider family; she never counted her as an individual. Not like she did with Narcissa and Bellatrix and Sirius and Regulus.

But things are somewhat different now that Andromeda is herself a mother. She has spent many an hour watching Nymphadora, holding Nymphadora, comforting Nymphadora, answering Nymphadora’s endless questions, wondering how any mother could push their daughter as far as Druella pushed hers, how any mother could fail to notice that she was in the process of pushing her daughter away for good.

Once, one dark and stormy night when Ted was working late in the city and there was no one to reassure her that the wind howling around the cottage and battering against the windows wasn’t Bellatrix or Lucius or Cygnus come to seize her and punish her for her indiscretions, Andromeda came to the terrible realisation that Druella probably didn’t realise that she was pushing her middle daughter away until it was too late. And that Andromeda might very well end up doing the exact same thing to Nymphadora.

It is not a pleasant thought to recall. Andromeda has tried to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.

She is just about to rise from her armchair and suggest making another pot of tea when Sirius turns his gaze from the window, his expression softened and saddened around the edges.

‘Father…’ he begins. He shifts. Scratches his arm. ‘Father came. To the Potters’ house.’

Andromeda sits back down.

‘Father asked me to come home,’ Sirius murmurs. He’s staring at his knee, at a hole in the fabric of his jeans.

‘Oh?’ Andromeda forces herself to say.

‘He said that he could take me home by force, if he wanted to,’ Sirius continues, he knee now bouncing up and down. ‘But he said he didn’t want to. He said he didn’t see the point in degrading himself to such an extent for someone so obviously intent on destroying his life. Or something like that.’ He gives a jerky shrug, a fruitless attempt at appearing unaffected by the recollection of the incident. ‘But he asked. He asked me to come home. For my mother’s sake, he said.’ Sirius laughs a short, bitter laugh - the sort of laugh that should belong to someone much older and much more cynical than Sirius had any right to be. ‘I dunno, but I might have done it,’ he adds, more quietly. ‘I might have gone home if he’d said he was asking for Regulus’s sake.’

Andromeda wonders if anything could have changed her mind. She wonders what might have happened if Cygnus managed to find where she and Ted had fled to, if he knocked on the door and asked her to come home, not for his own sake or her mother’s sake but for the sake of her little sister. For Narcissa.

She isn’t sure.

‘How is he?’ she asks quietly.

‘Father?’

‘Regulus.’

She has wanted to ask about Regulus since Sirius first arrived on her doorstep. She has heard bits and pieces from Alphard, of course - she knows that Regulus was Sorted into Slytherin as everyone expected and is doing well at school as everyone expected and has made it onto the Quidditch team, which admittedly came as something of a surprise.

But she suspects that no one knows Regulus better than Sirius does. She suspects that if anyone knows if Regulus has surrounded himself with Slytherins whom his family approve of or whether he is beginning to forge his own path, as Andromeda herself did before him, then it will be Sirius.

She has always worried about Regulus more than she has done about Sirius. Sirius has always had the confidence - the recklessness, perhaps, the lack of self-preservation that was surely behind the Sorting Hat’s decision for placing him in Gryffindor - to stand up to his mother and his grandfather and everyone else in the family. Sirius has never been afraid, not even when he was a child, to speak his mind and say his piece.

But Regulus was always so quiet, so shy. Andromeda remembers him as a small, timid boy, constantly hiding in his brother’s shadow or behind his house-elf’s ears. Regulus never objected to Bellatrix’s bullying or Narcissa’s fussing; he always went along with whatever anyone asked him to do, even if it was clearly something that he would rather not do. She supposes his behaviour was the result of being the youngest of the five of them - and of having older cousins and an older sibling with such strong, dominant personalities.

She has hoped that Regulus might have come out of his shell at Hogwarts, that he might have made friends of his own once he was separated from his overbearing mother. She knows that Alphard is concerned about Regulus’s passivity, his lack of self-respect, his tendency to follow and to submit to anyone he thinks holds a position of authority over him, but still she hopes.

She has no idea how Regulus will cope with the pressures that are now landing on his shoulders in the absence of his brother. But still she hopes.

‘Everyone’s always asking about Regulus,’ Sirius says with a derisive sniff. ‘Everyone’s always so concerned about poor pathetic little Regulus.’

‘I’m concerned about you, too, Sirius,’ she says carefully. ‘But you are much less likely to give me a straight answer if I ask how you are.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘See.’

‘I’m…’ He sniffs again, juts his chin out, looks at her with an almost steady gaze. ‘The Potters are great.’

‘Good. I’m glad.’

‘They said I can stay with them for as long as I like.’

‘How generous of them.’

‘Yeah.’ He shrugs. ‘I’ll probably leave when I come of age, though.’

When he comes of age. When he turns seventeen. Seventeen. He is so young, so immature, so full of childish bombast.

Andromeda remembers seventeen. Seventeen was when she fell in love. When she made her grand plans. When she pulled herself away from her family’s expectations and began to forge her own life, her own path, her own family.

She understands, now, how young seventeen is - how naive. She understands how easily all of her careful, meticulous plans could have gone so horribly wrong. She understands how much she was risking for the love of a man. For love of herself.

And Sirius is even younger than she was when she made that decision.

‘Where will you go?’ she asks.

‘Dunno.’ He shrugs again. ‘Haven’t decided yet. I’ll probably get a flat somewhere with James and Remus and Peter.’

‘With what gold?’

‘Dunno,’ he repeats. ‘I’ll get a job at the Leaky or something. We’ll figure it out.’

He is so, so young.

‘You’ll still be at school when you turn seventeen,’ she points out. ‘You will be at Hogwarts for the majority of the year; why not wait until you have finished school?’

‘Will I?’

‘What?’

‘Will I still be at school when I turn seventeen?’

She frowns. ‘Sirius.’

‘What?’

‘Of course you will still be at school,’ she says. ‘You must finish your education.’

‘Why? It hasn’t done you much good, has it?’

She sets her jaw, tells herself that she mustn’t be offended, mustn’t take his words personally, that he is just lashing out because he’s trying to hide something, deny something.

‘Your path will not be the same as mine,’ she says quietly, hoping that it is true.

‘True,’ he admits. ‘I’ll be fighting in a war.’

And there it is again. Why must every conversation lead to war?

‘You should leave the fighting to the aurors,’ she says, as calmly as she can manage.

‘Maybe I’ll join the aurors.’

‘You’ll need an education if you wish to do that.’

Sirius huffs. ‘In wartime? I reckon they’ll be desperate for fresh blood.’

‘Not so desperate as to recruit someone who will be a liability,’ she says. ‘Why are you so keen to fight, Sirius?’

‘Maybe because my whole family is so keen on obliterating every single person that I care about?’

‘Not your whole family,’ she says quietly.

‘Enough of them.’

‘Sirius…’

‘I’m fine,’ he insists. ‘I’m making plans, see? Thinking about my future. Couldn’t do that before, could I? They’d laid my whole life out for me, hadn’t they?’ He gestures with one hand. ‘Now I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. Freedom’s brilliant, isn’t it?’

‘You will be severely limiting your freedom and your options for your future if you decide to prematurely finish your education in favour of fighting a war.’

‘Christ, now you sound like Alphard.’ Sirius sighs and flops back against the settee. ‘Give me a break, Romy. I’ve just escaped from a cult.’

That’s my Sirius, she thinks with a smile. Sirius Orion Black: as changeable as Bellatrix, as overdramatic as Narcissa. Emotions constantly in flux, always reacting in unpredictable ways, forever making light of grave situations and taking off-hand comments too seriously.

‘I just don’t want you to make any hasty decisions,’ she says.

He flashes her a grin and tosses her precious photo album onto the cushions as he stretches his arms along the back of the settee. ‘Bit late for that, isn’t it?’

The telephone rings and Sirius flinches again. He does more than flinch, in fact; he practically jumps off the settee and grips his own arms tightly and tries to pretend that he hasn’t reacted, that he isn’t affected.

‘It’s the telephone,’ Andromeda explains as she heads into the hallway to answer it and cease its incessant ringing. ‘A type of muggle communication device.’

She remembers how alarmed she was by the telephone when Ted first brought it home and showed her how to use it, how bizarre she found the noise it made when it rang and the noise it made when she turned the dials to telephone Ted’s parents and the noise it made when it attempted to connect to Ted’s parents’ telephone.

She still hasn’t quite got the hang of using it. Still doesn’t particularly like using it, either. There is something she finds rather unsettling about being able to talk to someone and hear their voice without being able to see them. She’s not entirely unconvinced that it isn’t dark magic. Dark and unsettling telephone magic.

‘I know what a telephone is,’ Sirius says, turning to watch her over the back of the settee. ‘I’m not a complete idiot. I take Muggle Studies and everything.’

She wonders if his parents know that their starriest child is taking Muggle Studies. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when they discover that news.

In the hallway, she picks up the telephone receiver and says, in a clear voice, ‘620927, Mrs Tonks speaking.’

‘Well, hello there, Mrs Tonks.’

‘Ted,’ she breathes.

She hasn’t realised how much she needed to hear his voice, until now. She would much rather he were speaking to her in person, of course - would rather see him and hold him and have him stroke her hair and whisper that everything is fine, that everything will be fine, and isn’t Sirius such a nice young chap?

‘Dromeda. Everything alright?’

‘Yes,’ she says, wrapping the curly telephone cord around her fingers as she leans back against the wall. ‘How are you? And Nymphadora? And your parents?’

‘All fine, all fine. We just got back from the park and Mum’s got a fish pie in the oven. She’s on about making a little one for us to bring home for you for your supper.’

‘She doesn’t have to go to that trouble.’

‘Try telling her that.’

Andromeda smiles. ‘Did Nymphadora enjoy the park?’

’She thoroughly enjoyed terrorising the ducks, at least.’

Andromeda thinks she can hear the sound of a duck quacking in the background and hopes that Ted hasn’t allowed their daughter to capture one and bring it home with her.

‘And now she’s thoroughly enjoying terrorising Dad,’ Ted continues. ‘Her new game is to sneak up behind him and quack in his ear.’

‘Quack— Ted,’ she says sternly.

‘Yes, my love?’

‘I thought we’d agreed to discourage Nymphadora from using metamorphmagic to tease people.’

‘She’s not doing any harm, Dromeda. Dad’s enjoying it almost as much as she is.’

‘Still.’ There is something about the frivolous way Nymphadora uses her abilities that has always irked Andromeda. ‘Her abilities aren’t a party trick.’

‘She needs to learn how to control it, Dromeda,’ Ted says, far too reasonably. ’And there is no better way for her to learn than by enjoying herself.’

She sighs. ‘I just don’t want her to draw unnecessary attention to herself.’

‘She’s perfectly safe. She’s with me.’

‘I know. I know, I just…’

‘Try not to worry. We’ll be home soon. How’re you getting on with the lad?’

‘Fine,’ she says, equal parts amused and irritated that Ted thinks it’s acceptable to ask her this when he knows that she cannot say anything in any great detail; when Sirius is sitting on the other side of the wall and no doubt attempting to eavesdrop as best he can.

‘Is he still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is he as you remembered him?’

‘Mm.’

‘You are so eloquent today, my love. I’m sure your cousin is delighted with your conversational skills.’

‘Ted,’ she hisses, cupping her hand over her mouth and the telephone receiver. ‘You know I can’t say anything just now.’

‘I know, I’m just teasing. Will you give us a phone when it’s safe to come home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very good. Love you, Mrs Tonks.’

She glances at the door and says, in a half-whisper, ‘I love you too, Ted.’

‘And I’ll see you—‘ He is, unfortunately, cut off by a loud quacking noise in the background. When Ted speaks again, his voice is filled with laughter. ‘And Dora says she loves you too.’

‘Tell her I love my human daughter very much,’ Andromeda says. ‘I have yet to decide my feelings regarding my avian one.’

She replaces the telephone receiver with a satisfying clack and leans back against the hallway wall for a moment or two. She wishes Ted and Nymphadora were with her; she wishes she wasn’t so stubborn and allowed them to stay, to meet Sirius, to support her through this difficult reunion.

And then she hears a noise coming from the living room. She stands up straight, smooths back her hair, resettles her expression, and remembers: she asked Ted to keep Nymphadora away from the house this afternoon because she couldn’t be sure what sort of situation she would be facing with Sirius. She didn’t know - and still doesn’t know, not for sure - if Sirius was, or is, angry at her for leaving him and angry at Ted for taking her away from the family and angry at Nymphadora for keeping her away.

She doesn’t know if this is all a trick. She doesn’t know if the family has, somehow, finally managed to wear Sirius down and is using him as bait to find out more about her and her family. Her true family.

She just cannot be sure of anything.

As she slips back into the living room she finds Sirius standing and inspecting the photographs on the mantlepiece once more.

‘Sorry about that,’ she says. ‘Would you like another cup of tea?’

‘Was that Ted on the telephone?’ Sirius asks, ignoring her question.

‘Yes.’

Sirius turns around. His expression is studied disinterest, bordering on aloofness - so he learnt something from his parents, after all - but his fingers are twitching, fiddling, spinning a silver ring that is certainly not his father’s signet ring around his middle finger.

‘Is he—‘ he begins, sounding disarmingly unsure of himself. ‘Is he coming back here? With Nymphadora?’

‘Eventually. Not yet.’

‘Oh.’

Sirius looks away and glances out of the window.

’They’re staying at Ted’s parents’ for tea,’ she tells him.

The implication that Ted has done this so Andromeda might be alone with Sirius, might assess the level of danger that Sirius may or may not bring with him, hangs in the air.

But Sirius is gracious. He turns back to her with a wide, if not entirely convincing, smile.

‘Alphard said you’d need some time to warm up to me,’ he says. ‘That’s fine. I’ve got time.’

Andromeda watches him for a moment as she contemplates how best to respond. She wonders how many conversations he and Alphard have had about her, about his decision, about his coming here to meet her and reunite with her and… what? Rebuild their relationship?

Is that what he wants?

Is that what she wants?

She knows it would be unfair for her to keep her distance, to hold herself back from him. She knows that she and Alphard are all he has left; they are the last ties he has to his family, his blood, his history.

And she knows how important such ties are - she knows that no matter how much he will shout and stamp his feet and deny that he wants anything to do with his old life, with the House of Black, he will need her and he will need Alphard. He will need someone who understands what it was to grow up in that environment, with those pressures, and what it means to leave it all behind. He will need someone to help him to sift through his wishes and desires and hopes and dreams, to untangle what he truly wants for himself from what the family has expected of him and told him that he wants.

He will need her.

But the larger, more selfish part of her is still so scared about what might happen to her and her precious family if she lets her cousin back into her life.

‘I should go,’ Sirius says suddenly.

‘What?’

‘I’m meeting Remus,’ he says, and she realises that there is still so much that she hasn’t asked him - about Hogwarts, about his friends, about his plans for the summer, about everything. ‘And I don’t want to keep you from Ted and Nymphadora.’

‘Oh.’

She blinks, surprised. It is an unexpectedly mature thing to say.

‘But, er,’ he says, looking every inch the nervous boy again. ‘Is it alright if I come to see you again?’

‘Of course.’ She takes a step forwards. She raises a hand, as if to… do something. She stops herself and drops her hand again. ‘I’d like that, Sirius.’

He nods. ‘Cool. Thanks.’

He walks past her, walks into the hallway, walks to the front door. Andromeda frowns as she realises that she doesn’t know how he arrived here. He’s too young to apparate here by himself… did someone bring him? Alphard? One of the Potters? Has she been horrifically uncivilised in allowing them to wait outside all this time?

‘Would you like to use the floo?’ she asks him.

Sirius pauses and turns back to her. ‘I didn’t realise you were connected. Alphard said it was unsafe.’

‘It’s connected from this end. For— for family use.’

‘Oh.’ His cheeks colour slightly. ‘Thanks, but I’ll stick with the bus. Floo always makes me a bit sick, y’know?’

She nods. She knows. She has witnessed Sirius’s accidents on more than one occasion and feels much the same way about floo travel, but the bus? She casts a concerned glance out of the glass panes of the front door, as if she can see that wretched purple bus in all its inglory blustering its way along the narrow lane outside her house and trampling her neighbours’ dutifully tended hedges.

‘The bus?’ she asks.

‘The muggle one. There’s a stop at the end of your road.’

‘I know,’ she says quickly. ‘But it won’t take you all the way to…’

She frowns as she realises that she doesn’t even know where the Potters live, hasn’t even bothered to ask Sirius where he’s been staying since he left Grimmauld Place.

‘Cornwall,’ he says. ‘And no, it won’t. But it’ll take me to Sheffield.’

‘Sheffield?’

‘I’ll get the train to Bristol from there.’

‘Oh.’

She doesn’t quite follow. Muggle transport confuses her at the best of times - which is why she deigns to allow Ted to drive her and Nymphadora to places with his noisy and frightening car - but Sirius’s return journey appears more confusing than most. And long. An awfully long and confusing journey for a teenager raised in an entirely closed-off and non-muggle sort of world.

She wonders if she ought to telephone Ted to ask him to come home and take Sirius back, to save him all this hassle.

‘That’s where I’m meeting Remus,’ Sirius tells her. ‘He lives in Wales.’

Bristol isn’t in Wales - Andromeda knows that much - but she feels so discombobulated that she cannot bring herself to question Sirius’s methods further.

‘Peter lives in Portsmouth so he’s meeting us at James’s,’ Sirius continues. ‘His parents are at a conference or something so we’ve got the house to ourselves for a fortnight.’

Andromeda manages to gather herself enough to issue him a warning. ‘Don’t get yourselves into trouble.’

‘Trouble?’ Sirius grins at her. ‘Me?’

‘Yes, you,’ she says, reaching past him to unlatch the door and sketch out the rune that will enable her to open it. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten about all those times you tormented your poor brother when your parents weren’t looking.’

Sirius has been stepping out onto the front path but freezes when Andromeda mentions Regulus. She immediately regrets bringing up their shared history.

He turns with a sudden, awkward jerk of his head. He stares at something in the hallway behind her and for a heart-pounding moment Andromeda fears that Bellatrix has finally found her, that Sirius has brought Bellatrix to her. But there is nothing there. No one there. She frowns, and as she turns back to Sirius, he finds his voice again.

‘Why did you leave?’

‘Sirius,’ she says softly, quietly, her heart racing though she knows this question has been a long time coming. ‘Sirius, you know why I left. You know that Ted and I—‘

‘Why did you leave me?’ he blurts out.

With the last of his teenage pretensions dropped, Andromeda can see how desperately young her little cousin really is.

‘I know why you left the rest of them,’ he continues, his words falling from his mouth with a speed that suggests he’s been holding them back since he arrived that afternoon, since she left all those years ago. ‘I know they would have stopped you from seeing Ted and would have punished you for trying to be with him in the first place, but why did you leave me?’

‘Sirius…’

‘Couldn’t you tell that I wasn’t like them?’

Her heart breaks to see him like this, his cheeks pink, his eyes damp, his hands clenched into fists at his side. Her heart breaks to hear him sound so childlike, so naive, still imagining that she had a choice at all.

‘Couldn’t you tell that I was like you?’ he continues, desperately. ‘You know that I never believed their crap. You know that I wouldn’t have told them anything if you’d written to me or let me see you or let Alphard tell me that he was still in contact with you!’

‘It was too dangerous.’

‘Bullshit!’ he exclaims. ‘You think it wasn’t dangerous for me, stuck there with the rest of them? Why didn’t you help me?’ he asks, his voice breaking. ‘Why didn’t you help me when you knew more than anyone else could possibly know what it was like for me to be stuck there with them?’

Andromeda swallows past the lump in her throat. She tilts her gaze upwards, to the ceiling, as she tries to compose herself in the face of Sirius’s entirely justified accusations. And as she does so she notices the curious face of a neighbour watching them from across the path.

She cannot cause a scene. Not even here, in this almost entirely muggle village; not when the gossip is at risk of spreading and reaching her sisters’ ears.

‘Come with me,’ she murmurs.

She brushes past Sirius, pulling the door closed behind her, and walks him around the front of the house and down the little alleyway between her and her neighbours’ and into the back garden.

She takes a deep breath.

‘I thought about it,’ she admits, glancing over her shoulder at him. ‘I thought about contacting you many, many times, Sirius.’

He doesn’t reply. She supposes it was a dissatisfying response to his questions - she might be a wife and a mother but she is not so much an adult, not so entirely removed from her own tumultuous teenage years, that she has forgotten how irritating it is to have an adult fail to properly apologise to you. Or fail to even acknowledge that they have done you wrong.

She takes a seat on a flattish rock at the edge of the fish pond in her back garden, and gestures for Sirius to do the same. If he is surprised to see her essentially sitting in the dirt, he doesn’t show it. His face betrays no emotion, in fact; his expression is as cold and closed off as any Black’s.

‘I spent a lot of time thinking about you,’ she says, reaching out a hand to trail it through the cool waters of the pond she once so vehemently argued against Ted installing in their garden. She told him it was too dangerous, a temptation too far for their young daughter who would surely trip into it and die a horrible watery death. He told her it was educational, that their young daughter would learn about pond life and water plants and that he would erect every safety charm around it that he could find. He kissed her forehead and kissed her swelling belly and she was powerless to do anything but acquiesce.

‘I spent a lot of time thinking about you, and Regulus, and my sisters,’ she continues. ‘I spent a lot of time worrying that I had been too selfish and too self-centred. That I had made a terrible decision. The wrong decision.’

Sirius sniffs. He juts his chin out and stares into the rippling surface of the pond.

‘I wrote to you after I heard about your Sorting,’ she says.

He turns to her then, frowning in indignation. ‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I did. I wrote to tell you how proud I was. And how frightened.’

His frown deepens. ‘You’re lying. I never received a letter from you.’

‘I never sent it.’

He turns away again.

‘I never sent it,’ she continues, ‘because I was frightened of the consequences should anyone discover that you had been in contact with me. I was particularly frightened about what your mother would do.’

She remembers the smile on Alphard’s face and the mirth in his voice when he came to tea that evening to tell her that Sirius’s Sorting had taken an unexpected turn. She remembers how scared she felt on Sirius’s behalf, how scared she felt that Alphard didn’t seem scared at all, but considered it all a great joke, a laugh, a middle finger to his supercilious older sister. She remembers Alphard telling her that the ‘drama’ would all blow over once Sirius settled down, once Regulus was Sorted into Slytherin, once the family got over their embarrassment at having a Gryffindor for an heir.

She remembers telling Alphard he was foolish for thinking that any of those things would come to pass. She remembers being surprised that one of them did. Regulus always seemed a perfect Hufflepuff to her: so loyal, so trusting, so eager to please.

‘I didn’t want to make things even more difficult for you,’ she says.

Sirius gives a huff of acknowledgement.

‘I didn’t want to put you into the position of having to lie about me,’ she says.

‘I wouldn’t have cared,’ Sirius says fiercely, turning back to her with glittering eyes. ‘I’m good at keeping secrets.’

That is news to her. As a child, he was an even bigger gossip than Narcissa.

‘Are you?’

He tilts his chin. ‘You have no idea.’

‘Regardless,’ she says with a soft sigh, ‘I couldn’t risk it. You were so young when I left, Sirius. I couldn’t risk such a secret with you. I couldn’t risk endangering my husband or my child.’

‘That’s not fair!’ He rips up a handful of water mint and shreds the leaves from their stalks, tossing them into the pond as he goes. ‘I’m not like the rest of them. I would rather die than tell them something that they could use against you.’

‘I couldn’t risk it.’

‘I’ve given up everything. I’ve done everything I can to prove that I’m not like them.’

‘You don’t need to prove anything to me,’ she says softly.

‘Don’t I?’

She sighs and turns her head towards the dark clouds rolling in on the horizon. It will rain later; she’s glad Nymphadora enjoyed a day at the park today because she will not enjoy a day cooped up inside tomorrow if the rain continues.

‘I gave up everything, too,’ she reminds him. ‘It wasn’t easy for me, either.’

He huffs.

‘Ted and I had very little money, very few resources, minimal support,’ she says. ‘I didn’t even have Alphard, at first. I only had Ted and his parents - good people, kind people, but people who would never be able to understand what I had given up or why I’d had to give it up in the first place. They will never understand what I had lost and what I was risking just to live my life how I wanted to.’

‘It wasn’t exactly easy for the people you left behind, either,’ he snaps back at her.

‘I know.’

‘Do you?’ He sits tall, looking every inch the once-heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black despite his ignoble pond-side throne. ‘Do you know what it was like to fight the family alone? To fight Mother alone? Your sisters?’

‘Yes, Sirius, I do. I did it for many years.’

‘Do you know what it was like to lie in bed every night, wondering whether your favourite cousin hated you for not being strong enough to follow you? Wondering what you had done wrong, to make them leave you behind?’

His words hit her like a slap to the face. She straightens her back and settles her expression and falls, so easily, so horribly, so horribly easily, into old destructive patterns.

‘Do you regret leaving Regulus behind?’ she asks, with a cold and devastating tilt of her head. ‘Do you feel guilty for leaving your little brother to face your mother alone? My sisters?’

Sirius rises to his feet. His jaw is set so hard Andromeda can see it trembling. His eyes are blazing, and for one wild moment she wonders if he is about to draw his wand on her. She has never been more grateful that she had the foresight to send Ted and Nymphadora away before this encounter could take place, because she isn’t sure if she would have the strength to fight back against Sirius, even to defend her child.

And she certainly wouldn’t wish for them to see her behaving in such a ridiculous manner.

‘That’s a low blow,’ he seethes. ‘Even for you.’

He turns to stride away, scuffed boots squelching in the damp grass around the edge of the pond.

It takes Andromeda just a split second to imagine her future carving in two from this very moment: it would be so easy to let him walk away, to pretend that he never came to see her, to continue as she has done for many years, almost entirely isolated from her old life. It will be difficult, she knows, to call him back, to apologise, to be honest. It might be even more difficult than leaving him was.

He has barely managed one step away from her before her hand shoots out to grab his wrist. He tries to wrench his arm away from her but she tightens her grip and forces him to look at her.

‘I know how you feel,’ she hisses. ‘I know exactly how you feel, Sirius. I am the only one in this world who can possibly know how you feel because I am the only one who has gone through what you are going through right now. Sit down.’

He doesn’t move. He stands there, awkwardly half-turned towards her cottage, and stares down at her with moist eyes and trembling shoulders and quivering jaw.

‘You are not alone in this, Sirius,’ she says, forcing a calmness into her voice. ‘Sit down.’

He slumps back down beside her, sitting with his back to the pond and his arms resting on his knees and his head in his hands.

Andromeda waits.

‘I’ve always looked up to you,’ he says, eventually, not lifting his head. His voice is cracked and wet-sounding and Andromeda considers reaching out to him, touching him; she knows that her husband would not hesitate to do so but she is still learning how to navigate other people’s emotions after two decades of repression, how to offer comfort, both verbally and physically, and she isn’t sure that she is competent enough in this mysterious art to be able to offer anything to Sirius, who grew up in the same environment as she did, without shifting all the stars in the sky from their orbits.

‘I know you have,’ she murmurs.

‘Do you?’

‘Bella always thought she was your favourite, but I knew we had a closeness that she could never hope to replicate. It was another reason why I tried to keep my distance from you after I met Ted,’ she admits. ‘I was worried that you would try to follow my path before you were ready.’

‘I’ve always been ready.’

‘I didn’t want you to follow my path without thinking through the consequences,’ she amends. ‘I didn’t want you to look at me and think it was easy.’

‘It’s easier than the alternative.’

‘I was worried that I might push you into a decision that should have been entirely your own to make.’

He lifts his head. ‘Did you really think that I would do it? Did you always think that I would leave?’

‘I hoped you would.’

He looks away again and she watches him try to sneakily wipe his eyes with his sleeve.

‘And I’m glad that you have left, Sirius,’ she tells him, and this time she dares to reach her hand out and touch his shoulder. To her surprise, she doesn’t flinch at her touch, doesn’t scowl at her and move away. In fact, he does the opposite: he moves towards her, leans against her.

‘Me too,’ he murmurs.

‘I am proud of you, Sirius,’ she half-whispers. ‘The weeks and months and years ahead will be difficult for you, but I want you to know that I am proud of what you have done. And that I am here, should you need me to be.’