December 21st, 1997

December 21^st,1997

The mirror in front of you is an ostentatious gift from your dead aunt. Wrought from a single slab of stone so black it looks green, it is the kind of thing only she could love. The ornately carved magical snake looks menacing as it winds around the simple Muggle mirror. It would have been a symbol to your aunt - one that reminded her daily of the control that witches and wizards wield over the weak Muggles. She would have wanted you to remember that message forever.

Instead, you married a Muggle-born, shamed the family, and kept the mirror to spite her.

You use the mirror now as you blend the various magical cosmetics onto your face. As the green eye shadow mixes with the black eyeliner, you remember the first time you stood in front of a mirror this way. You had been ten and old enough, you were told, to look and act like a lady of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. So you sat with your mother as she "put on her face" and then you tried to do the same. Your excited hands would not stay still and soon you were a mess. For hours you practiced, growing tired and bored as your mother explained (again) about the benefits of using magical cosmetics as opposed to spells.

But you never once complained.

From birth, practically, you understood your obligation to your family. You were a member of the Black household, and to complain about learning lessons from your mother was almost Muggle.

A loud noise startles you. You reach for your wand and spin to your left quickly before recognizing the noise as what it is: laughter. You walk over to your window to identify the laugher, only to see your daughter and two girls stepping out of some horrible Muggle car.

Well, you reconcile, it is not a horrible Muggle car. It is a horrible car in general.

Your family taught you that the words 'horrible' and 'Muggle' were interchangeable. You only learned the difference between them after dating Ted, when he began to teach you about some very not horrible Muggle things like ice-skating, frozen pictures, and ice cream sundaes. But even to this day you struggle to remember that you do not hate Muggles. You never hated Muggles. You only learned how to speak as if you did, speak as if you were better than everyone else, believe that you were better than everyone else.

Seeing your daughter walk up the path to your home in broad daylight makes you anxious. But you need not fear anymore, you force yourself to remember as you loosen your grip on your wand and enjoy your daughter's freedom. The Dark Lord is dead. Harry Potter killed him nearly three months ago. A breath you had not meant to hold releases itself, and tension eases out of your back. The Dark Lord is dead and you and your family are no longer in hiding.

You turn from the window, your ingrained sense of duty forcing you to finish with your make-up.

In your aunt's old mirror you see your straight Black hair, your high Black cheekbones, your blue Black eyes. You embody the family you left behind. How you wish you shared Nymphadora's abilities to change appearances on a whim.

Your daughter, you remember as you finish the last touches, is naturally blond. Not that you could tell at first; even at eight months she was bald, you shudder to remember. But then she bloomed into a miniature Narcissa. As if living in fear of your family was not enough stress for you in 1969, as if you did not see your resemblance to Bellatrix every time you looked at your own reflection, your beloved daughter looked like Narcissa. You wonder sometimes if it was not your desperation for change that infused your daughter with her special ability to change her appearance on a whim.

Not that her abilities ever changed what you have seen - and still see - every time you look at her. Even as she stepped out of that car today with bright pink hair, you saw Narcissa in her. And the mirror in front of you still reflects the memory of Bellatrix. And in your very eyes, you see the way it used to be...

There were five of you, the heirs to all that was Black. You were to become the next generation of power-wizards. Born into privilege and taught to wield power, people noticed when you entered a room. Your clothes were impeccable, your language flawless. Your friends were handpicked. Your house at Hogwarts and life afterward predestined.

...then you met Ted Tonks, a brown-haired boy with manners to match your own and a bloodline too Muggle to bear. He won your heart by pulling out your chair, taking you to expensive dinners in Hogsmeade, and dancing with perfect care at Balls. Later you would learn he came from a high class of Muggle. At the time, you did not believe there were classes in the Muggle world. Your courtship dragged on for months and then years but you never imagined you would marry the boy. Your parents had arranged a marriage for you, one with the right sort of wizard.

A knock on your door startles you. You put down your make-up brush and stand as the door swings open to reveal your daughter and her two friends.

"Wotcher, Mum!" Nymphadora exclaims and you resist the urge to cringe. You cannot help but blame the Ravenclaw house for her habitual use of colloquial speech.

"Good afternoon, Nymphadora," you reply.

"Mum, this is Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley," your daughter announces, remembering years of etiquette you forced on her and which she deliberately tries to forget.

Your own training in etiquette keeps you from staring, but you are stunned. These two young girls - who the Black family would have labelled Bloodtraitor and Mudblood - are part of the new wizarding royalty: the Heroes. And though you have read about them in the paper and heard the rumours floating around, you have next to no idea how they might know your daughter. Were they a part of the Order? Weren't they too young, too inexperienced?

"Hello," says Hermione Granger, the founder of Dumbledore's Army.

"Hello, ma'am," says Ginevra Weasley, one of only two witnesses at the Final Battle between Harry Potter and the Dark Lord.

"How do you do?" you ask, inclining your head slightly toward each girl. "I've heard the stories about you both, of course,"

"Those stories have grown far beyond truth," the young Miss Weasley says.

"What you gave up for this war can never be exaggerated," you reply, knowing that décor would keep you from speaking more, though your curiosity begs you to continue. Like you, these girls chose to befriend one boy and their entire lives changed. They were also dragged into a war.

"We were about to leave and meet up with Remus Lupin and Ron Weasley. I stopped by the house to pick up a different pair of trainers and Hermione insisted on speaking with you," Nymphadora announces, feeling awkward no doubt. You look at her with your sad Black eyes and see the distance between you grow. She thinks you do not understand these girls.

"Yes, Mrs. Tonks. I did want to speak with you," Hermione Granger says hesitantly.

"Yes?" you prompt, curious to know what this girl could want with you. The newspapers write about Hermione Granger as though she were fearless. What would make her hesitate in your presence?

"I was wondering if you'd read the article about Sirius Black in the Daily Prophet on Tuesday." Her words freeze your heart.

"Of course," you reply stiffly, keeping yourself from finishing the sentence, from saying that you combed through every word of that damned article, disbelieving and angry. You searched through it for any lie that you could find, hoping Rita Skeeter had written it, hoping that Harry Potter's quotes were lies, but as the days passed and there was no retraction, your heart broke into more and more pieces.

"I wanted to come by and tell you in person that it was an accurate piece," Hermione Granger - the best friend, the bookworm, the brilliant - announces.

"I had assumed it was," you reply. You see Miss Granger nod and move to leave and you are grateful. Sirius is a part of your past you would rather not talk about with strangers - or anyone, really, except Ted.

"Did you know before it was printed?" asks Miss Weasley, pulling your attention toward her.

"Know what?" you ask.

"Know that Sirius Black was innocent," finishes Ginevra. You almost want to lie and say that you knew, that he was your cousin and you never doubted him, never hated him.

"No. That was the first I'd heard anything about it." You wish that Ted were beside you, holding your hand and knowing exactly how devastated you'd been that Halloween night so many years ago.

"Harry asked them to run that article," Miss Weasley explains, still refusing to leave you and your tragic past alone.

"Harry Potter?" you ask.

"Yes," replies your daughter. You look at her and belatedly realize that if she knows Hermione Granger and Ginevra Weasley, she must also know Harry Potter. He was the one who released a statement denying the press any details concerning the Order of the Phoenix, your daughter's beloved organization.

It makes you sad to realize that in a different world- one without a Dark Lord or Death Eaters - Nymphadora might have been like a cousin to Harry Potter, might have watched over the boy during dinner parties because wherever Sirius went, the Potters were not far behind, and Sirius often visited you.

When the Potters died and Sirius was sentenced to life in Azkaban for killing thirteen people, you felt betrayed, like he had turned you over to the Dark Lord. He was a Death Eater? He fell in with them? When he escaped all those years later, Aurors were assigned to guard your house and you hated that you wanted him to come and see you, to explain why he had done it. You wanted him to stand before you so that you might slap him, hate him, and watch him hurt. How dare he have been a Death Eater?

And now to know it was a mistake - to know that he spent thirteen years in Azkaban for a crime he did not commit - it hurts too much to think about.

"I know that he wrote you while he was in school," Miss Weasley says. You resist the urge to take a step back. How could she know about those letters, those letters that started the night of his sorting, when he proudly wrote to tell you that he was put in Gryffindor despite a thousand years of Black tradition?

"Did he write you after he escaped?" Miss Granger asks.

"Yes," you reply, "but I didn't read those letters."

"Did you keep any of his letters?" Miss Weasley asks. You consider her, then Miss Granger, and finally place your gaze upon your daughter. Why has she been so quiet throughout this discussion?

"I kept the ones from his school years but I burned the ones I received after he escaped."

"You didn't think to give those letters to the Aurors looking for him?" Nymphadora asks with an angry edge in her voice.

"No. It never occurred to me, and it's good luck I didn't as he turned out to be innocent," you reply softly, looking at your daughter.

"But you thought he was a Death Eater, You-Know-Who's second in command, and you hid evidence," Nymphadora complains.

"I chose not to betray family," you reply. Seeing Ginevra Weasley nod out of the corner of your eye, you turn to look at her. Her eyes are filled with understanding and you are glad that Nymphadora has such friends. You hope your daughter can become more like this young girl, but you know the truth: Nymphadora will always resent you because she believes you did not choose a side in the war.

She does not recognize the way you fought against the Dark Lord and his beliefs when you were twenty and chose to marry a Muggle-born. She never knew that your parents arranged for you to marry a man who would have provided a comfortable lifestyle. She does not realise that you risked poverty, disgrace, and death the day you chose Ted. Instead, she sees the way you never picked up your wand and killed a man who sided with the Dark Lord.

Nymphadora does not know that you grew up beside those followers - you dated and loved them. She is not afflicted with your sense family loyalty that even now keeps you from hurting Draco Malfoy, your nephew. She does not understand how you can empathize with Death Eaters and pity them because she never knew her Uncle Regulus who joined their ranks and was murdered trying to flee. She is unaware that you struggle every day to ignore the beliefs your family infused into your education at a young age, the same beliefs that the Death Eaters so ardently fought for. How could she understand you when you and Ted have worked these twenty-six years to teach her nothing of that sort?

But still, you sometimes wish she understood that you fought for the Light long before her precious Order existed.

"We meant to come and speak with you before it published in the paper, but Tonks thought it would be easier if you read it first," Miss Weasley explains, pulling you out of your thoughts again and sounding as if she were apologizing for her behaviour. What she ought to apologize for is calling Nymphadora that horrible nickname.

"Thank you for the thought," you reply, inclining your head. "I can only wonder why my daughter would not have told me herself. How long have you known that he was innocent, Nymphadora?"

"Nearly three years now." Your hands shake. You had not expected that response. That meant she had known he was innocent when he was still alive. You sit on your chair in front of your vanity and look at you hands, trying to regain your composure.

"Four years?" you breathe, still staring at your long Black fingers.

"Yes." You try to organize your thoughts. How was this possible? How could she have just-

"Why wouldn't you have told me? Why wouldn't you have brought me to him?"

"It was an Order secret," she replies, as if that ought to be enough to heal your wounds, as if not seeing your cousin ought to be acceptable because the godlike Albus Dumbledore decided you weren't to know. You look up at her with wide, disbelieving Black eyes.

"An Order secret?" You spit the words at her. "You are my daughter. He was my cousin-"

"Just because you don't respect the Order of the-"

"He was my cousin," you hiss at her. "The last of my family!"

"You have Narcis-"

"I have no one. I had him, but seventeen years ago I thought he betrayed me."

Hermione Granger and Ginevra Weasley meet your furious gaze. They understand your loss. They know the devastation caused by trusting someone without thought and having that person turn traitor, but your dear Nymphadora looks stunned because while she might have been betrayed, she never guessed you had too.

You look wildly out your window at this neighbourhood, this Muggle neighbourhood, and hate yourself for never telling her what this place cost you. Why have you never set your pride aside and explained the price of normal? How could your daughter see your severed family and think that you lost nothing?

"How," you begin, trying to regulate your breathing, "did he die? The article didn't say."

"He died fighting a Death Eater in the Department of Mysteries two years ago," Miss Granger recites as if she knew you would ask this question.

"I met him a few years ago, Mum, and got to know him-"

"You did not know Sirius Black," you whisper, still staring out the window.

"I did. I met him and I'm proud to be his cousin. He died fighting Bellatrix Lestrange-" You turn toward your daughter

"Bellatrix? My sister Bellatrix?" you ask. Flashes of black hair and sharp features cross your mind's eye.

"Yes. He fought her as you would never do," Nymphadora says and for the first time in your life you want to reach out and strike her.

"Of course I never fought her," you say forcefully, standing to face your daughter. "She was my sister. You don't fight family."

"Sirius did. Sirius fought against Death Eaters, didn't just avoid them!" she yells - yells as you would never do, as all of your upbringing begs her not to. You look at this pink-haired angry girl and regret her ignorance.

"I never duelled a Death Eater because every time I looked at one of them, I saw your face, Nymphadora. I saw what you could have become," you rant, surprising everyone in the room. "If I had married Riley instead of Ted, if I had not betrayed my family and moved here, where do you think you would be right now? You, my daughter, would be wearing black robes and a white mask, running from the law and angry at the death of your master."

"I would never have become a Death Eater," Nymphadora spits.

"It's the only thing you could have become." The room spins as you realise what you have said in front of these strangers, these children, but when your eyes meet Ginevra Weasley's, you know that she understands. "People are not immune to the Dark Arts, and the Black family would have ensured that you became a loyal follower. It is not easy to turn from the Dark Arts."

"Sirius turned from them."

"I turned from them," you snap. The room finally stops spinning and you take a step toward your daughter. "You accuse me of not caring about this war, of not choosing a side. Well, daughter, look out the window and see the Muggle neighbourhood in which I live. Look at your father, my husband, and realise that my parents and sisters disowned me when I told them of our engagement. Go ask your father about the death threats we received from my best friends after the wedding. Look at this scar on my arm that Bellatrix gave me the day you were born and tell me that I did not choose a side, that I did not fight against Voldemort."

"You didn't fight against You-Know-Who," your daughter says, unable to even say the Dark Lord's vile name. "You didn't fight against anyone."

"Would you have me fight my sisters, my housemates and best friends? Would you have me look into the eyes of family and kill them for not being strong enough to break away?"

"I would have you fight against the ones that threatened you and your family with death."

"And become just like them? No. Never. I left the path of killing when I said yes to your father and I will never go back."

Your words drag the last bit of anger out of you; they echo around the room, bouncing off your aunt's mirror and colliding with the three children standing before you. You want to sink to the floor and weep. You want to give in to the pain and grief welling up inside you, but you do not let yourself give in to weakness. Instead, you stand with your shoulders squared and look at your daughter. How could you have let her live so long without understanding? Does she understand now? Can anyone who did not grow up in the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black?

Angry, your daughter leaves the room, probably in search of her father and his reassuring words. In her place she leaves Hermione Granger and Ginevra Weasley, two students who meet your gaze and understand what your daughter the Auror does not. Nymphadora still lives in the black and white world of her childhood - the world you never wanted to disrupt - where there is good and evil and nothing in-between. Miss Granger turns and leaves with a nod, but Ginevra stays.

"Sirius once told me," she begins with a soft voice and wide eyes full of pain, "that you were his favourite cousin. He pointed to the spot where your name used to be on the family tree and said, 'That was my cousin Andromeda. She married a Muggle-born when I was ten and taught me that not all fighting is done in duels. She's the reason I'm a Gryffindor.'"

"That doesn't sound like Sirius," you say with an equally quiet voice.

"Yes, well, right after that he added, 'Not that I ever took her words to heart. Duelling was always my favourite pastime.' He never was very good at following his own doctrine."

You smile and want to cry at the same time, a terrible pain ripping your paper heart in half as you let yourself remember your cousin fondly for the first time in sixteen years. How dare he have been innocent. How dare the Order have kept him from you.

"Why didn't he come to me?" you ask, ashamed to have tears in your eyes.

"He wanted to," replies Miss Weasley, "but it would have put Harry and the rest of the Order at risk."

"He could have come in secret."

"The Aurors were monitoring your house," Miss Weasley counters.

"They left in 1994, when he was spotted at Hogwarts," you protest.

"They had wards tracking all magical persons within a three block radius. He wasn't allowed to leave headquarters and coming here was definitely out of the question. He asked."

"I could have gone to him." You hate that her arguments are convincing you. You hate that the Aurors lied to you. You hate that your daughter most assuredly knew about the wards and did not tell you.

"We couldn't give access to headquarters to any member of the Black family. They were a security risk."

"I gave up that name years ago."

"But the house would have recognized your blood, and if it had accepted you as a Black, all of the spells in the house would have reset to accommodate you, erasing the Fidelis charm." And all at once, you know the location of the Head Quarters. Thinking back, you should have guessed when Ginevra mentioned the family tree. Grimmauld Place. It would only ever recognize one heir, and if you'd gone there you would have put the entire Order in danger, and as little as you care about protecting them, that means Harry Potter would have been in danger. And protecting Harry Potter was a priority. It had to be. He had to be.

"I understand," you say.

"I don't. Not really," Ginevra says, surprising you again. "I don't understand anything of this war. I don't understand why my brother died or why Harry - a teenager - did what even Dumbledore could not. I don't understand what made the Aurors different than Death Eaters after they were given the authority to use the Unforgivables. I don't understand why I can't forget the look on Voldemort's face when Harry shot that spell at him, that look of complete terror, and I don't know why it makes me pity that man. I don't understand what makes a person evil or good."

"Just ask Nymphadora," you say, only half-joking. "You'll get an answer readily enough."

"I know what she would tell me; she would say that a person is evil if they ever supported Voldemort. She does not believe in second chances; she never had to. She might even say that if a person did not throw a curse at a Death Eater, they sided with them."

"You don't believe that?"

"Do you?" Ginevra asks, tilting her head to the side. "Under that definition, I would be classified as evil, for I once helped Tom Riddle attack Hogwarts, even if I did not intend to. A teenager convinced to join the Death Eaters without knowing why would have to be considered evil, even if he turned from their ranks. Under that definition an Auror torturing another human being would always be good, and Harry Potter, whose connection kept Voldemort alive sixteen years ago after the curse rebounded on him, would also be evil, would he not?"

"And a woman," you reply, "who burned the letters of Voldemort's Second-in-Command rather than turning them into the Aurors would also be evil."

Her grin lights up her entire face and she inclines her head. Then her eyes briefly flash over to your vanity.

"There is a mirror just like that at Head Quarters," she says.

"There would be. It was a gift from Sirius's mother," you explain as you look over at it. In the reflection, you see Ginevra wrinkle her nose and shake her head.

"I hate that woman."

"Most people do."

"Why do you keep it then? Doesn't it just remind you of her?"

"It does, but it also reminds me of how far I've come," you explain, walking over to the mirror and running your hand along the edge of it. "When I was growing up my mother taught me how to be a lady in front of a mirror like this. She taught me how to put on make-up, dress for formal balls, speak in front of the Minister of Magic, and walk with the grace of a queen."

"It's funny, I don't think Tonks knows how to do any of those things," comments Ginevra.

"No," you say, "she doesn't."

"I bet," says Ginevra Weasley with her dark brown eyes and soft red hair, "that Tonks has never sat in front of this mirror."

You look into the Muggle mirror and see the reflection of this girl, this child, this Hero and you shake your head. She leaves the room a moment later, leaves you standing in front of the mirror that reflects your past: two dead cousins, two incarcerated sisters, and one large unhappy home. You look into the mirror and see yourself, Andromeda Tonks, the woman and mother.

There is a difference between good and evil. You know that. But if anyone asked you to draw a line in the sand, you would laugh. No line, no man, no mirror can distinguish between the shades of grey in a person's soul.

Sirius beat his servants and terrified his enemies, but he loved the Potters.

Regulus joined the Death Eaters, but in the end he tried to flee.

Narcissa supported her husband's torturing methods, but she hid her son in another country so that he could avoid the war.

Bellatrix killed, tortured, and maimed anyone that disagreed with her, but she never lied and never gave up on her beliefs.

You never helped the Order of the Phoenix, but you have never killed another human, cast an Unforgivable, or practiced Dark Magic. How did you, out of all of them, survive?

There were five of you, the Black family heirs, the next generation of power wizards, born to fortune and taught to wield power. Were you destined to divide and fall or was there another path you could have chosen? Were you evil? Are you evil?

When you sit back down on your chair at your vanity and pick up your make-up brushes, you find that you don't care if the world thinks you are evil. As Ginevra Weasley said, people thought she was evil when the Diary Incident surfaced. For most of his time at Hogwarts, people thought Harry Potter was evil. If they are the company you must keep, you would not be ashamed. Besides, in the place in your heart that Ted created and in which Nymphadora resides, you know you fought for what you believed in.