Autumn, 1981

She is trying to convince Dora that no, one can't go to school with blue and purple hair, ("and not either or, either! Turn it back, now!") - especially not when her Muggle teachers aren't really up to date on the whole Metamorphsing thing and think Andromeda experiments with hair dyes on her seven-year-old (or lets her watch not very child-friendly programming about Lords of Darkness) - when the front door slams open and shut. Moments later, after the usual sounds of not having put his shoes on the rack or his cloak on the hanger, he enters the kitchen, looking worn out as so often these days. Being in Magical Law Enforcement ("one of Fudge's slaves, you mean") was not very fun these days, perhaps even less so than it had used to be over the past decade.

"Hello darling," she greets him, managing to snatch two of the five mismatched hair clips making her daughter's blue and purple hair stand on end as Dora is momentarily distracted by her father's return. "Hard day?"

"Mm," he nods noncommittally, seemingly struggling to keep up with Dora's excited retelling of her day, that had included somehow ending up in the pond with the ducks rather than just feeding them.

"That sounds great, love," he eventually - and rather uncharacteristically - cuts her off somewhere between an unimpressed but rather exhausted teacher and cheering classmates - "now, would you be a doll and go feed Ears for a bit? I need to talk to Mum about something."

"But we fed him already," she says, as though surprised that he's not with the program - "he had two carrots!"

"Mmm. Then go pet him a bit. Bunnies like that."

"But - "

"Please Dora, just go out for a bit."

Her unusually subdued father seems to make an impression, and, third carrot in hand ("Just in case he's got friends over"), Dora runs out of the kitchen and into the yard, loudly calling for her well-fed, big-eared rabbit.
Andromeda shuts the door behind her daughter, merely sighing at the sight of the not-very straight rug left behind Dora, and turns back to Ted. He has sat down at the kitchen table, wringing his hands nervously.

"What is it?" she asks with a frown, trying to mentally skim through the possibilities. His parents ought to be in perfect health, or had certainly been last Sunday at any rate - and he can certainly not have been laid off when there are more criminals to catch than ever before. Some of which certainly send her anxiety spiralling, but she prefers not to think about them.

He gestures for her to sit down next to him, and she does, heart beating all the faster.

"Please, Ted, what - "

"They caught the Potters' Secret-Keeper. The one who betrayed them to Voldemort," he says bluntly.

"Oh thank heavens," she exclaims, relieved. "Not that it matters to that poor child, I guess" she adds with a sigh - "but still..."

"Yeah," he says tensely, licking his lips. "Yeah. But it's not all good."

"What do you mean?" she asks, feeling the familiar tension and anxiety creeping back as she sees him trying to muster up the courage to say something. "Ted, for God's sake, what is it?"

"It was Sirius," he finally says, looking like he wants to cry. "My God, 'Dromeda, it was Sirius...."

The tension and anxiety explode inside of her; quietly as always, over the years she has got experience of controlling it - but this time the explosion is more deafening than anything she can remember. Worse than when Reg went missing.

"No," she finally hears herself say, without realising it. "No."

"'Dromeda---"

"NO," she says for the third time, more loudly. "You've got it wrong!"

"I was there, 'Dromeda!" he says, still close to tears. "I was there, right there - Pettigrew'd gone after him, caught on somehow I guess - but once we got there... He'd killed him too. We found a finger."

It's too much; she isn't listening, but yet the words cut through, one after one, mercilessly.
He'd killed him too. Did it even make it worse? She isn't sure.

Sirius. Her Sirius, her ally, her only ally - the only one that she'd got to keep. Seemingly the least Black of them all, with his unaristocratic laugh and Muggle clothes ("have seen enough robes from the last century to last me a lifetime, thanks") and roaring horror of a motorbike, always such a welcome sight in her sleepy suburb (both to her and the her teenage neighbours, less so to their fathers).

"But how?" she cries, tears flowing freely like she seldom lets them. Not over them, not anymore. But he was never one of them. She was, once - he never was, not even as a child.

"I don't know," Ted sighs, looking more defeated than she's ever seen him.

They had tried - they had both tried so badly, once she was safely out. Tried to help, what little they could do, tried to offer an alternative. And he had fought his fight, for all those years, with them watching from the sidelines and cheering him on as loudly as they dared. And then, finally, he too had been free. She had only been prouder when Dora had taken her first steps the year before - it had been such a relief. Such a victory; something that had re-lit her hopes and dreams that this madness could actually end.

Yesterday, it had. Yesterday, the world of her parents, sisters, brothers-in-law and cousins had come crumbling down as the Potters' cottage dissolved in rubble. Like a house of cards everything had fallen apart - everything her father had taught her was inevitable and true, everything they and she once too had based their lives on was gone.

Today it was her turn; her world. Sirius.

"I don't know," he repeats helplessly, wringing his hands. "They must have got to him. Somehow..."

"But that's not - he hadn't even spoken to them in over five years!"

"We don't know that," he says bitterly. "We thought so, but at this point, there's not a lot I'm taking for granted anymore."

She refuses to believe, even when she knows she must. Somehow, they got to him. There is no other explanation, however badly she tries to reach for one, tries to reason. The only thing that's left is the failure; their failure to do what her poisonous family must have done.

There is no trial; Ted comes home cursing up a storm about Fudge, Crouch and all the Wizengamot in such a violent manner that Dora bursts into tears and runs upstairs.

Azkaban. Life. Fudge wants Ted on the team that will oversee the transport, but he manages to land himself on probation for subordination instead. Andromeda cries some more and wonders if there aren't actually Dementors in her very kitchen, breathing over her shoulder every day when Dora is at school and Ted tries to keep Fudge from sacking him.

Sirius gets no trial, but what seems like the rest of her relatives do. From the spectator's bench, the highest one and behind a pillar, out of sight from the accused and Skeeter, Andromeda watches her sisters and brothers-in-law swear up and down that everything she has ever seen of them is a blatant lie. Lucius and Narcissa claim Imperius; Rodolphus (who appears alone, claiming his wife to be indisposed) takes them all on such a long-winded tour of the fine print of the entire collection of Statutes that she suspects he and Bella are acquitted by the sheer desperation and boredom of the court.

Dareios is put before the court as well, and Andromeda and Ted spend a week in bitter silence over her refusal to testify against him. "You know he was one of them!" Ted yells before the silence takes over, his pathos for justice deeply offended. And she does - him taking the Mark was the first nail in the coffin of their life-long relationship. She knows he was a Death Eater, and what the consequences for him ought to be. But she can't bring herself to do it - the shame makes her feel as dirty and unworthy as she felt the night ten years ago that she knocked on Ted's door, soaking wet after running through a storm, having left her old life and fiancé at the Lestrange Estate after one final night in the place she had spent so much of her teens, and seen so much hatred grow. But she can't do it, and rescue comes from the very unlikely place of her uncle, who convinces the Wizengamot not to call her because she "isn't trustworthy". It feels as though he's right.

November turns into December, Dora turns her hair white and red and proclaims that she will be wanting a friend for Ears for Christmas ("what're you going to call that one, Fur?" Ted jokes, back to his old self on most nights) and Andromeda tries not to notice that there is no loud and foul-mouthed Christmas card with drunken gnomes on it, singing Oh Come Ye Merry Hippogriffs in a very familiar, out-of-tune voice. Instead she finds an elegant silver one at the bottom of the mailbox one morning, Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and Peaceful New Year in a familiar aristocratic script. "Sure trying, aren't they?" Ted snarls ("peaceful indeed!") when he sees it.

The slivery pale card burns well, and Andromeda will never admit to spending the last mornings before Christmas hoping to see another impersonal greeting in a familiar hand waiting for her. But none arrives, and they have long ago unsubscribed to The Prophet and its long-winded and hateful editorials and thus have little insight into how the loss of everything they built their lives on has gone over in the Lestrange home.

Until New Year's Eve comes along, that is. The Ministry's New Year's Party gets cut very short when the Auror on call comes running into the Atrium, making Crouch turn pale as he hurriedly delivers a message. Ted gets called to the scene and when he returns he goes straight into the bathroom and turns the water on, only badly disguising his retching and crying. When he finally comes out, he only says that he has never seen anything like it, and never wants to again. ("Couldn't they at least... have finished it? Let them go?")

This time neither of them have any doubts, even before the news breaks. It is obvious. Obvious, and probably inevitable, but Andromeda is still nauseous for months like she has only ever been in the months before Dora was born. Ted never tells her what he has seen, but the WWN isn't as kind and neither are the whispers in Diagon Alley on the rare occasions she ventures there. After a last, in what will be several years (until Dora's Hogwarts letter forces her to go) horrific visit Andromeda cuts off her hair that all her life has made people take her for Bella. When the dye only turns it a soft brown instead of anything more radical she bursts into tears again, bitterly cursing the Black heritage that refuses to budge, seemingly from any of them, no matter how much she fights to wash it away.