The First Nymphadora, or, The Fall of the House of Black

THE FIRST NYMPHADORA

or

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BLACK

By F.P.Barbieri

He had, at first, laughed. Then it had developed into sarcasm. Then, in front of her insistence, he had grown angry. And now Ted Tonks was really furious - a fury not without an element of guilt at treating his own wife this way as she was seven months pregnant. He was always touched by her - small, neat, soft-spoken. But he knew that behind that gentle exterior lay considerable stores of obstinacy; in spite of her rebellion against her hateful family, she was still in some ways a spoiled princess of the House of Black, used to saying things and having them just so. And today she seemed to have overdosed on smooth-faced, unresponsive obstinacy. What was goading him to screaming fury was not even her obstinacy, as such; it was the way her face seemed to have turned to marble. She did not seem to be hearing a single word; she did not react to what he said. And it was this appearance of indifference that drove him to scream, shout, rage, try to break through that stone smile somehow.

"If you want to wreck your daughter's life, go ahead, do it," he was howling as he gesticulated, walking up and down the drawing room. Andromeda sat unconcerned in a comfortable armchair, the bulge in her stomach looking almost as large as the rest of her. "But don't expect me to cooperate. You obviously don't think I mean what I say. But if you insist, you will be doing it without me, and that is a promise!"

"Considering how loudly you put your points, I can hardly believe you did not mean them," answered Andromeda in a wholly untroubled monotone, "and neither, I think," she added with the ghost of a smile, "do all our neighbours in the next few streets." She was about to go on, but a roar from her husband completely cancelled her own words.

"Oh, you believe me, do you? So why do you act as if I'd never said anything at all? You just sit there with your face like I was some sort of distant noise, pay no more attention to me than if I were the man on the moon! I'm your husband, woman! And the father of your child! And where I come from, the father has a say in this sort of thing!"

"I am sorry you should feel like that, Ted, I really am. But this is one thing in which I cannot change or even argue. Her name must be Nymphadora."

"And it will be without me, 'Dromie. I'm going."

"You... you... what?"

"I'm going, 'Dromie. I'm leaving. What the Hell am I supposed to be doing here if you make decisions like that as if I wasn't even here, as if it was your affair and nobody else's? As if you could ruin your daughter's life with a dumb name and not even pay attention to the fact that her father, your husband - your supposed husband - is telling you that he's against it? Telling you you're going to hurt the girl? Your own daughter? Obviously I don't count for anything around here. So I might as well go."

There was a silence. Then Andromeda Black Tonks spoke in a very small voice: "Do you really mean it, Ted?"

"I do." Maybe, he thought to himself, he would wake up tomorrow and think otherwise; he was not good at holding grudges. But here and now, he meant exactly what he said. What kind of marriage was this shaping up to be, in which decisions were taken without so much as paying attention to his views? He had to assert himself, not to let her have her way unthinkingly; to avoid becoming a mere domestic appendage to Andromeda Black. Or else, to start again somewhere where, Muggleborn or not, he would be treated as an equal.

His thoughts broke. His eyes had been drawn to his wife's white face as it turned away; and streaked across her cheek as she turned away as if to hide them, he saw the unmistakable long trail of teardrops. She was crying in silence; and his immediate instinct was to rush to her and hold her in his arms, till whatever was shaking her was gone. He had to remind himself that this was a quarrel, and a serious one.

"Ted... listen. There is a reason why I want that name and no other. I swear, I was not trying to impose on you... please. I would never treat you like... Please. I have nothing to live for, except our marriage and our child."

"Well, suppose you tell me the reason, then."

"Because... because it's an ugly story. Because I always hoped that I would not have to tell it... to have to remember it. And th - then ... you might not believe it. You might think I am crazy. And because even if you do believe me, it will change a lot of things. And it's an horrible story..."

"You already said that. Right, darling, so it is horrible. So I might not believe it. I will tell you what I will not believe: I will not believe that your part in it was bad or shameful. I will not believe that you ever did a mean thing in your life."

"Oh, Ted, Ted, Ted, you silver-tongued devil you... Thank you so much. I am going to try ... But hold me, my darling, and don't let me go. We have to go to places I had never wanted to see again.

"You see, Ted, there was another Nymphadora. She was my cousin."

"I thought you had... oh."

"Yes. She was my cousin. She was the elder sister of Sirius and Regulus. Aunt Walburga was already pregnant with her when she and Uncle Orion married - in fact, she was the reason for their marriage." He thought for a second to ask why he had never heard of such a personage, then let it go. 'Dromie would tell him; and from what she had said so far, he was not going to like the explanation. "The House of Black on all sides insisted that there should be a marriage, because otherwise the child's paternity would never be certain - and the last thing Grandfather Pollux and his cousins wanted was rumours about the paternity of any member of the Noble and Ancient House of Black."

The last few words were spoken with a bitterness with which Ted had become familiar.

"You see, I know them now. I carry their curse myself. All the Blacks live very short lives - for wizards - even those who become great and powerful sages like Phineas Nigellus. Soon, sooner or later, we all become aware of it. We become aware that long before our friends and partners even start to grow old or weak, we shall be dead - dead - dead. You will hardly find a Black in several generations who has lived as long as a hundred years. That may be all right for Muggles, but not for us. Look at Dumbledore; and he is not even the oldest wizard living - Olivander, for instance, has him beat by decades."

This struck Ted Tonks forcefully. He had already had to contemplate the possibility, if he lived a good wizarding lifespan, of outliving all his Muggle relatives; but it had never occurred to him that he would be in danger of seeing his fresh-faced, rosy bride wither and die before him. He instinctively held her a bit tighter, and thought he felt a stifled sob through her frame.

"I don't know... I do not know whether this is some forgotten curse on our race, or just bad genetic material. What I do know, darling, is that it sends Blacks mad. The whole family has learned to escape from the truth about its mortality. That is what the Black fetish with blood purity is about. They make out to themselves, we make out to to ourselves, that we are special. We are Blacks, we are pureblood, we have the oldest pedigree of any wizarding house in the known world.

"And we do not dare let anyone criticize us. Believe me. To find a Black less than perfect is a killing matter. I was taught it as a child, we all were. It is our right to be admired; anyone who refuses to find the Blacks, and especially the purity of our blood, awe-inspiring, does us a grievous wrong. That is what we are taught. We are taught to seek revenge for any slight upon our blood. We are told epic stories about Blacks of the past, who had avenged such insults under the most difficult conditions... crawling under miles of hidden caves... or losing themselves in time till they were unable to return - merely in order to avenge a slight to the House. We were taught to believe that secret and cruel murder is heroic and deserves admiration... when done in the name of the house of Black, of course."

Ted stared at his wife. She had always seemed to him the perfect English rose, with her peaches and cream complexion, natural curls, and huge blue eyes; a person whose nature was sweet, though obstinate, who made him feel that she drew strength from his arms and loved to cradle herself in his embrace.

All that had gone now. She had grown rigid in his arms, without even realizing it. Her words, though whispered, came like bullets from a gun, harsh and brutal; her eyes burned under drawn brows, and her face was pale as death, the skin seeming to be drawn tighter over her bones. It was more than violence that she was expressing, more even than rage; it was something that suggested destruction - even in that slight, curvy, pregnant figure.

"Word has seeped out down the centuries. Wizards and witches have learned not to even think of us in any way that we do not want to be thought about... they have learned not just to say that they admire the purity of our blood, but to actually mean it. Centuries of fear will do that. I do not know where the wizarding obsession with pure blood came from, but certainly the House of Black was one of its main promoters for as long as records stretch.

"Well, when Nymphadora was born, nobody could have doubted that she was a Black. There had been problems, you see, because Aunt Walburga had got herself pregnant before marriage. But Nymphadora was just the perfect Black. She had the rich, wavy black hair that had given us our name, the clear light skin that the most respected branches boast of - both Aunt Walburga and Uncle Orion had it - and the most astonishing blue eyes. You know Sirius? That extraordinary contrast between thick black eyelashes and bright blue eyes, as if he were wearing mascara? Except he is not, it's just the way his face is. What did you say about him, Ted? A bloke has no business being so beautiful? And Nymphadora was his female counterpart. Her eyes were like flame. When she looked at you, you could not look elsewhere.

"There was rejoicing in the house, of course. Uncle Orion made her first birthday something like a state occasion - invited every relative and every witch and wizard he knew, treating his baby daughter as though she were the hereditary princess of the kingdom. A couple of more children in time, and he and Aunt Walburga would have been recognized as the leaders of the Black clan.

"Except things started going wrong. Remember, this is all stuff I was told; I was born a few years later. But it seems that, practically as soon as she could speak, little Nymphadora started showing an independent streak."

"Ahhhh..." said Ted Tonks. "Now we're getting there." His wife smiled briefly and ruefully.

"Sort of, I guess. I had to piece what happened next together, from things that Nymphadora told me without thinking... and from facts I know... and from dark allusions from my parents and my sisters. First and foremost, the fact that Orion and Walburga did not have another child for ten years."

"What?"

"Surprising, isn't it? Nymphadora was ten years older than Sirius, twelve years older than Regulus. Indeed, I have to wonder whether they would ever have had any children at all if it wasn't that in the meanwhile, my parents had had Bella, Cissie and me. They were stealing their thunder, you see.

"I also know that during this period, Walburga and Orion were twice separated for long periods of time. The family covered it up, pretending that Orion had gone on initiatic trips to Siberia. Only, one of my earliest memories was of Uncle Orion staying with my people, and me being told not to bother him and not to tell anyone he was here. And I looked it up, and the time when this must have happened was that of his second trip to Siberia. Siberia, Hell! He was in our house, kept away from the sight of others.

"I never told you about my childhood, Ted, did I? A Black childhood is an awful thing. Even before you understand what you are about, you are under the weight of huge, dreadful... how can I describe it? It is as though the anger and power and hate of all those centuries were there, present, judging and assessing you. They are present in the walls. The very house looks at you in disapproval... You walk as if under a permanent glower, trying to stay quiet and well-behaved and obedient. It is not as though you actually got hit a lot - a Black princeling, after all, is supposed to be a privileged being - but the mental constriction is such that you live in fear even without realizing that it is fear. That is how I and Bella and Cissie lived - Cissie less than us, because she was the baby and to some extent the pet of the family. And yet, even her... well! You always feel the eyes of the grown-ups on you - the house-elves, and the houses themselves, are an extension of their will."

"Big Brother Is Watching You," said Ted grimly.

"You think so? Whoever thought that one up had no idea what Big Father Is Watching You was like - let alone Big Mother.

"I have always wondered, ever since I realized the real facts, what Uncle Orion was doing hidden in our house. I suspect, though I will never be able to prove it, that he must have assaulted his wife - assaulted her so severely that, if the Ministry and St.Mungo's ever got to hear of it, he would have been for Azkaban, double quick. So my guess is that the family covered up for him, hid him, negotiated with his wife until she was willing to get back together, and then made sure that he would behave. Blackmailed him into acting decently. Ha!" laughed Andromeda mirthlessly. "Black-mailed him. Sounds right, doesn't it? That is the sort of thing they would do.

"And the thing is, Ted, I am sure that their quarrels had to do with Nymphadora. I think that Orion saw the trouble coming from the beginning, and wanted to correct Nymphadora, force her to be a proper little Black, never mind what. And I think that Aunt Walburga was being sentimental and trying to defend her little daughter from the means he would no doubt use. Nymphadora once told me that when she was in trouble as a child, she always ran to her mother. And Walburga herself, at the end, pretty much blamed herself for Nymphadora's career.

"By the time Nymphadora was nine, her parents had been reconciled again. Nymphadora learned to disguise her views and reactions, and by the height of luck, the next child was a boy, Sirius. The Blacks, Orion and Walburga especially, are a very old-fashioned house. Male heirs were preferable. And the curse of the Blacks was beginning to snap at their heels - they were getting older, time was running out. So they focused on little Sirius, and pretty much left Nymphadora to her own devices. Then, next year, she was sent to Hogwarts, and that put the seal on it.

"It is about this time that my memories are beginning to become coherent. I know that to me, Nymphadora was this incredible creature. Any time I would go visit her was a red-letter day. She was already tall and beautiful, but she was fun! She would always take time to play with us, and since I had never had any playmates except for Bella and Cissie and the house-elves, I could never get enough of running after her and playing tag and touch Quidditch and green broom. Oh, God, she was something else, Nymphadora.

"You know how most wizarding children look on their elder brothers and sisters with a kind of awe because they are 'going to Hogwarts'. 'Going to Hogwarts' marks a sort of epoch. But with me, it was the reverse: it was not the thought of distant and mysterious Hogwarts that lent prestige to my cousin, it was the thought of my cousin going to Hogwarts that lent enchantment to the place in my mind. I would dream of wizarding boarding schools at night.

"And you have seen that the thing that always tends to happen at Hogwarts is that people tend to find their places - places they may as often as not keep all their lives. They tend to join this or that party, make friends with this or that person, take a definite position in the school one way or another. However, Nymphadora proved from the beginning that she was something special. She did not join a party: she started her own.

"She was sorted into Slytherin - not, I gather, without a lot of pressure from herself, because the Hat wanted her in Gryffindor. But she knew that if she went to Gryffindor, she might as well never bother to go home after - her father would kill her. Besides, as she told me much later, Slytherin was the house of the ambitious, and she certainly felt ambitious enough.

"I don't suppose that she started out with anything much in mind. It was just that she was magnetic. She made friends easily; and once someone was her friend, they found that they had a protector. She would go straight to the Head of House or to any teacher if any of her friends needed defending; or else - well...

"There was a sign in first year of how things were going to be. You remember Dawn Heaton? She was one of the big girls in Slytherin: a fourth-year, part of the leading gang, and damned well made use of it. Quiet-looking girl, like a creeper - before you notice it, she's all over the place. Sweet as sugar to your face, but God help you if she did not like you."

At the comparison of Dawn Heaton to a creeper, Ted Tonks had started laughing. "Oh, my God! I've seen them, 'Dromie. I nearly got trapped by one of them once... thank God for you."

She smiled. "Er, well... Anyway, Heaton decided that she did not like Claudine Bulstrode. Claudine was a first-year, big and ugly and clumsy like all the Bulstrodes, and sensitive with it. Within a couple of months, Heaton had managed to convince most people that she was retarded and possibly dangerous. There was increasing trouble and Bulstrode found herself having to fight some people who did not even know her. It looked as though she might be expelled soon.

"But Bulstrode had befriended Nymphadora on the train to Hogwarts, and Nymphadora knew that her friend was being ill-treated. And as she kept her eyes and ears open, she began to have a strong idea who was at the back of it. So she went to her Head of House to plead for her friend - this, mind you, was an eleven-year-old first year. Maybe twelve, I'm not sure.

"The Head of House was old Horace Slughorn. Tell me, Ted, what do they say about him outside Slytherin?" And the corners of Andromeda's lips curled upwards slightly.

"Hmm. Well, he is better liked than most Slytherins. Lots of people find him funny. He is so absurdly fat and such an absolute caricature. And people make jokes about his parties - I got my share of teasing when he started inviting me. But I assume he must be clever, to have got where he is."

"He is, all right. I suppose you understand, by now, what his parties and stuff are about. He fancies himself as a talent-scout in the wizarding world, and he's pretty good at it, too. Anyone who looks like they might amount to something, even if they are not Slytherins, he makes a point to get to know them, has them over for tea, and eventually makes them the members of his own little circle. As a result, there is not one important area in wizardkind in which old Horace does not have friends and cronies.

"So, when Nymphadora went to him about Bulstrode, I think he must have realized that the little Black first-year had potential. Anyway, he heard her out, and pointed out that there was nothing he could do about the matter. You can't punish people for spreading rumours.

"From what happened, I would say that he must have made it pretty clear to the girl that, if she wanted the situation solved, she had to solve it herself. That is my guess, at least. Old Slughorn would have wanted to see what she was made of - whether she would turn up to be one of the big talents he discovered so often.

"She did not disappoint him. As she told me afterwards, she summoned one of the family house-elves and set him to spy on Heaton and report every single infraction she committed. Then she would make sure that the teachers would find out one way or another. Next thing anyone knew, Heaton had lost Slytherin sixty points in a week, and her stock in Slytherin was plummeting. Slytherins like winning, and they don't like people who wantonly throw house points away.

"Only then did Nymphadora pick a fight with Heaton. The girl was half-discredited in the eyes of most of Hogwarts already, and it was now that a noisy fight on behalf of Bulstrode could have an effect on her chosen public. As well as get Heaton in more trouble - she goaded her, a fourth year, into publicly attacking her, a first year.

"Of course, most of Heaton's friends stuck by her. But the point is that Nymphadora Black was now a party leader in Slytherin. A first year. She had gained friends and prestige, and Slytherins notice that quickly. And Claudine Bulstrode was no longer an outcast; she was one of Nymphadora's friends, and that meant something to everyone.

"Then there was the great Quidditch war. I think this happened in her third year. It happened that the then Slytherin captain had disappointed a lot of people, and the general feeling was that she was letting people into the team based rather on being members of her circle than on talent. Everyone was unhappy, but it was Nymphadora who decided to do something about it.

"I heard the story at second hand, so I don't know how she did it. But it turned out that on the first Saturday of Trinity term, after the Easter holidays, a second Slytherin team entered the pitch just as the official team was starting a practice. Team Slytherin Two was made up of six of the most disappointed players in Slytherin, and Nymphadora herself as captain and Beater. They did not even announce what they were trying to do, but just started playing against the official Slytherins, as if this was a league match.

"Well, the story goes that Team Slytherin Two played a blinder, and beat the official team comprehensively. There were a lot of spectators, because word had spread that a game was being played, and every Quidditch fan in the castle had rushed to the grounds. Of course, Nymphadora had made sure that this happened on a Saturday afternoon, with no classes. It seems, too, that she herself proved a star. As Beater, she played 'under the hoops'..."

"Did she now? That would show some serious skill!"

"That's what I was told. She would sit far back, waiting for opponents to attacks so she could belt Bludgers at them to disrupt them at the best moment."

"My goodness, I wish I had seen her... I had only just learned to understand the tactic when I graduated. You have to be absolutely brilliant with Bludgers, and willing to be hit rather than unleash them at the wrong moment. And you have to have a constant awareness of the whole state of play."

"Absolutely. And she did it so well that she still managed to have time to keep an eye on the opposite Seeker and disrupt her game repeatedly. It seems that by the end of the game, the opposite captain was literally in tears of frustration.

"There was only one thing that she seemed not to be very good at, and that was study. She always seemed to just squeak by at the bottom of the classes each year. But then came the first exam, OWLs, and she started revising like mad and blitzed everything she took.

"Well, Ted, that's just the way she was. Even when she looked bored in class, she really was taking in pretty much everything, and so when she set out to revise, she was already half-way there. And she was clever. She could understand pretty much everything she read. When she did not, she was not above hard work - but she told me once, she did not see the point of working hard unless she had to."

"These are not the only stories I know about Nymphadora. One day, Sirius and I must sit down and write a book of our memories of her, because, if we don't, it is unlikely that anyone will."

"Why Sirius?" interrupted Ted. Andromeda went on as if she had not noticed.

"Anyway, by the time I was starting in Hogwarts, she was a sixth year and a prefect. Old Slughorn had been keeping his eye on her, and this was his first official sign of favour. There had been a great deal of fuss when she was appointed, because by then, as you can imagine, she had as many enemies in Slytherin as friends. Rivalries happen in every House, but in Slytherin they can be particularly serious. And the issues between Nymphadora and her enemies were so bad that old Slughorn thought it better to nominate one of her enemies, Maria Lypny, as Prefect along with her.

"However, Nymphadora decided to try another tack. She did not use her position as Prefect to settle old accounts: to the contrary, she did everything in her power to be seen to be fair and correct, and to smooth old enmities over. She certainly impressed a lot of people. I was too young to understand everything that was going on, but five years later one of Dawn Heaton's old cronies surprised me by telling me that she supported Nymphadora because she had been so struck by her fairness in her last two years at Hogwarts. Now, I knew Nymphadora and loved her; but I feel certain that all that show of fairness was not something she did naturally, but something she put on for a definite purpose. She was out to become popular and impress people. Next step, of course, was Head Girl.

"What she knew at the time, and whether she had already decided on her course of action, I do not know. Remember, I was a second-year at the time, and she was a seventh-year. Merlin knows what she had heard and brooded upon, unconsidered news, unnoticed disappearances, accidents. However, it was only in her seventh year that we first heard the name of Lord Voldemort."

"I remember..."

"You do, don't you? You were one year ahead of me. From one day to the next, everyone seemed to have heard of it, and to be full of notions about it. We were twelve, Ted; little more than children in mind and body. We mouthed the name and spoke of the threat with the delicious sense of naughtiness with which children speak of anything that their elders loathe. For a while a lot of us had fun pretending to be his followers.

"I don't know how it was with you, Ted, but, with me it happened like this. A boy I knew fairly well - a Ravenclaw who had helped me with some Arithmancy - was called out of class. We did not see him again for two weeks, and we never were told the story, but it seemed to seep out as these things always do. Within a couple of days, the whole school knew that his home had been flattened and burned down, his dad and mum and three sisters all killed, and that there was a big green death's head with a snake seen floating over it, and all this somehow meant - though none of us had ever heard of the Dark Mark before - that this was a Voldemort killing.

"This was different. Many of us knew him - can you believe I can't remember his name now?"

"Wasn't it Lavinius Marpeth?"

"Oh yes - no, wait, Lavinius was later. I think it was..."

"James Defreeze!"

"Yes, by Merlin, James! Of course! Amazing what you forget..."

"You do know he committed suicide afterwards..."

"I... I know... two things, Ted... things have changed. James' fate was stolen from him... all of ours were. Well, as you say, Professor Kettleburn came into Professor Vector's class and called James out. And that was probably the first public murder by the Enemy and his band, certainly the first we heard of. Well, we were children - as I said - the thought of losing our parents or our brothers and sisters was terrible, inconceivable... Suddenly most people were not finding Voldemort so glamorous any more. And then there were two more cases that year.

"But something strange was happening, too. Some of the kids who had been into the Voldemort fad did not admit that he was really guilty of all these horrors. A small number of people started making excuses for him, or suggesting that the evidence was faked. You even heard the expression 'collective delusion' - remarkably advanced language from twelve-year-olds.

"Some kids were just stubborn; others were indoctrinated by their parents and older friends - that is where expressions like 'collective delusion' must have come from. But the thing is, we were seeing the formation of a conscious Voldemort party. Kids were having arguments, even fights. And as the Voldemort supporters were few and outnumbered, they were developing a victim complex - the kind you always see with bandits and the like."

"We had them too, darling. There were a couple of Hufflepuffs who absolutely would not believe anything. Badger obstinacy, I'm afraid. And neither of them was pureblood, even! I remember Frederick Frangipani, who was as pureblood as anyone, mocking them. One day he started giving an account of what Lord Pureblood would do to them once he had found out. I admit he was crude - he described them being flayed alive, eviscerated, and worse things yet - but Heck, we were speaking of a known murderer! So they assaulted him. Before anyone knew it, he was lying bleeding on the floor.

"It was felt that he had provoked them, so they narrowly avoided being sent down. But for the rest of their time at Hogwarts, they were shunned. Badgers don't forget that easily. Now I wonder if we were right to boycott them... as you say, it would only reinforce their victim complex."

"Was that Arthur Starley and Fidelis Hudson?"

"So you heard of them?"

"I did. Well, it's hard to know what is right. And whatever else, those two deserved their treatment. But the thing is, Ted, that is how a party grows up. History was taking place around and within us, Ted... and that is usually a bad thing.

"I learned that the hard way, when I had my first fistfight with Bella since we had been little. As small children, we had often had fights, but as time went on, and especially after we both went to Hogwarts, we got out of the habit. But when the rumour of murders started spreading among the students, and most of us became disgusted with Voldemort, she was one of those who stuck by him. She had bought into the Black family values, you see, much more consciously than I ever did. I mean, I had learned the stories, same as everyone else, and I was impressed like everyone else - after all, we were meant to! - but I don't suppose they ever made much sense to me. I still believed that being a Black was something special, true, but, looking back, I honestly do not think I ever imagined myself killing anyone because of the name. I found out that Bellatrix felt differently.

"Already after the first multiple murder, it became clear that she was of the Voldemort party. So, when Benjamin Brookstanton's father, mother, grandfather and sisters were all murdered, I went straight to her and confronted her. I was in a fury, asking her how she could possibly support this kind of thing, but she was fifteen where I was thirteen, and she barely bothered to answer. She just called the Brookstantons "mudbloods," and that, as far as she was concerned, settled the matter. I was revolted, and seized her by her blouse, screaming how she would feel if Dad and Mum had been murdered that way.

"Before I knew it, I was on the floor, with my mouth bleeding and two or three teeth knocked out. She hissed at me: 'The blood of a mudblood is one thing, and the blood of a Black is another. It is ours that is sacred. If you haven't learned that yet, you are a disgrace to the name of Black!' Then she hit me again.

"At that point, luckily, Slughorn, our Housemaster, appeared on the scene. There could be little doubt as to what had been going on - I was practically dangling from Bella's left fist, bleeding and with the marks of her fists on my face - so I only got a small detention, while Bella got a very severe one. She took it without blinking, and did not speak to me again for the rest of the term. Cissy was too young for Hogwarts yet, so I had no idea how she felt on the matter, but I had a strong feeling that, when I went home for the summer holidays, I would do well to keep my views to myself.

"That was Trinity term, and, coincidentally, Nymphadora's final year."

Ted had forgotten the point of the story for a minute. Now he was brought back to it with a slam. Who was this person? He remembered all his time at Hogwarts perfectly well, and he knew for a fact that no such person had ever been there. Had she ever existed, or was she just a figment of his wife's imagination? And if that was the case... God. Where do these horrible thoughts come from? These ghastly paranoid suggestions, at the back of one's mind, poisoning the air and freezing the soul? Had he, after all, married a mad woman?

Shut up. Shut up, monster! Look at her, so gentle in the fading evening light, so soft and curvy and undefended in his arms. Think of the way she had been afraid to tell her story - because, exactly, of this suspicion. That was not a mad woman speaking. And even if she was... this was the woman he had married. For better, for worse, till death do us part. If anything was wrong with her, he would help her. And hear her out first.

"...A few days before graduation, I saw her going to Slughorn's office on her own. There was nothing surprising about her visiting Slughorn; it was known that she was one of the members of the Slug Club - you know what I mean."

"As I recall," said Ted, "you were a Club member yourself." Andromeda blushed prettily. They had first met in the Slug Club, and she had spent a long time trying to dodge Ted, who was handsome but undeniably Muggleborn, and a Hufflepuff to boot.

"Yes - I may have been his one big mistake - but then - we'll get there, Ted. Some things have changed since then.

"But, I mean, Ted, the thing was weird. You know what I mean. Horace likes his little parties, prizes friendship and intimacy among his Club members, and always makes a great show of never seeing people alone, to avoid making favourites among his favourites What was Nymphadora doing there alone and after hours? And he was not the kind to seek for sexual favours, nor she to grant them. So I was curious. I stuck around and tried to hear what was being said, but of course it was a hopeless notion - teachers' offices are magically protected, what else do you expect? And then suddenly it was curfew and the caretaker found me out of bed, and I was given a detention for my pains. But at any rate, it was after ten o'clock in the evening, and Nymphadora had not yet come out. Their conversation must have gone on long into the night.

"Next day I had a Potions lesson, and because of the previous evening, and because my detention was with him, I was trying to see what kind of mood Slughorn was in, and what he was thinking. Well, he was very abstracted indeed. Normally he was a very scrupulous teacher. Potioneers have to be: get one thing wrong and you might explode your cauldron or poison the whole room. But that day he had his mind completely elsewhere. He even misread his own lecture notes. And when, inevitably, one student blew up a beakerful of solution - not even a cauldron, mind you - he let himself go into a wholly uncharacteristic burst of anger. Normally old Slughorn was the very picture of good humour and ease in class. I don't think anyone had ever seen him angry before - indeed, he himself must have realized how unusual that was, since he almost immediately apologized. Hogwarts is not a very disciplinarian sort of place, but I never saw any other teacher apologize - to a student - in class. He said he had a lot on his mind.

"That evening I saw him enter in the Great Hall together with Dumbledore, talking very softly, but with visible animation. The debate seemed to last most of the dinner period. I kept my eyes on them as long as I could, and as the desserts were being served I saw Dumbledore say something at some length and, it seemed to me, in a serious and forceful tone. I also thought that the teachers closest to them had fallen silent and were paying attention. Finally Dumbledore stopped. Slughorn said nothing, but after a second or two, he gave a short, decisive nod. And I may have been imagining things - I was sitting well down from the High Table - but I thought that Flitwick, Kettleburn, McGonagall and Dumbledore himself suddenly looked more at ease, as if some concern had been removed.

"That was the night I had to do my detention with him. It was a rather dreary matter of checking the footnotes and bibliography of an article he had written for a specialized magazine, but at least it did not take long. Perhaps he had meant it that way, because, just as the work was finished and I was saying goodnight, someone knocked at the door. Without even asking who it was, Professor Slughorn pointed his wand at the door, which opened, and let Nymphadora in.

"She was surprised to see me there, and we hugged; then she turned to Slughorn, with an anxious look on her face. Slughorn offered his hand and smiled, and Nymphadora shook it and looked relieved. This was all I was allowed to see before she and Slughorn both pointed out that it was near curfew time and I had better go to bed.

"The next day was Graduation Day. On that occasion, the ceremony was slightly rearranged so that the star students, the recipients of special awards, were awarded at the end, as a sort of climax to the whole procedure. Last of all came Nymphadora; and the speech in her honour was a little Slughorn masterpiece." (I remember those, thought Ted.) "Without being either overlong or effusive, it managed to convey the impression that here was a wholly exceptional graduate, capable of achieving anything she set out to do, and also distinguished for human gifts, sympathy and kindness.

"This was the first time that Nymphadora met Minister Sewardston.

"I last saw Nymphadora with her parents that summer, before she began working for the Daily Prophet as a columnist. That must have been the work of Horace Slughorn - who would give a recent graduate, however brilliant, a prominent soapbox on the country's leading wizarding newspaper, unless there had been some skulduggery? And in fact Nymphadora's first column or two were not up to much. But soon she had mastered the art of writing neat, thoughtful, entertaining pieces with sharp opinions, and keep them within the prescribed size.

"It was a strange, tense summer, even in our home. Bella and I did not speak of our quarrel, but I began to have a feeling that there was a distance between me and the family. I hated that, especially where Cissy was concerned. Pretty Cissy, I loved her so much. But that summer she and Bella were as thick as thieves.

"When we went to stay with Uncle Orion and Aunt Walburga there was the same feeling of walls going up. The grown-ups were abstracted and nervous, and you sometimes came across them talking quietly in little knots. Sirius and Regulus were both hyperactive and occasionally fought. Nymphadora behaved like a polite guest dropped in from another country, and carefully ignored my advances. It was almost a relief when the visit was over, even though it meant going back home - I think that was the first time I really realized how much I really hated the Black mansions - and having nobody to play with or talk to except the house-elves.

"The last Wednesday before the start of the school year, Mother invited a few close friends for afternoon tea - the Malfoys, the Notts, the Parkinsons. It was one of those awesome occasions when we children were supposed to just sit around looking decorative, while the grown-ups talked about matters of which we understood one word in three. Bellatrix, however, was allowed to take part. She was nearly an adult, as even I could see, and old enough to understand. However, one thing I could understand of the conversation was that they were all very annoyed at Nymphadora. When her name first came up, I had an itch to get up and ask about her; almost immediately, however, I realized that that would have been a brick of the most fearful variety. There was talk of trying to get Orion and Walburga to make her see reason, and Mother mentioned that she no longer lived with her parents. She had hired a flat in Diagon Alley. When Mr.Parkinson asked why Diagon Alley of all places, Mother said with distaste that she was out in the street all day, making herself popular. She said that word popular as though it were something despicable.

"That was how I learned that my cousin had moved out of the house of her fathers - something well-born wizards and witches rarely do unless it is to marry or to set up a new estate.

"The following week, when I got to Hogwarts, I learned more. Sirius told me that there had been no warning at all; Nymphadora simply informed her parents of the move one fine morning, packed up her stuff and went. He said that her parents, that particular time, did not make a scene, but you could see they were angry enough to kill. He and Regulus stayed out of their way for the rest of the week, until one night they came upon Aunt Walburga alone in her parlour, crying her eyes out. Regulus, who was still a child, naively tried to approach her and console her somehow - and was bawled right out of the parlour for his pains. For the rest of the holiday, Uncle Orion's mansion was marginally more cheerful than your average morgue.

"For the next year or two I saw nothing of Nymphadora and only heard of her in grumbles and sneers. It was kind of odd, because one got the impression that she was shaming the family, but nobody seemed to want to say exactly what she was doing that was so horrible. Cissy and I were also forbidden to read the papers - suddenly everyone remembered that we were only children and should not be exposed to all the horrors of adult news. That was not a concern our parents had previously shown.

"Well, I ask you, Ted! Do I look like a fool?" (And Ted smiled to himself.) "Young I certainly was, and I may have missed half the things that went on, but this kind of blatant manipulation did not do anything except sharpen my curiosity. Our parents seemed to have forgotten that we were all Slytherins - myself included. Once we get an idea into our heads, we do it, whatever happens. I wanted to know what had been happening to Nymphadora and how she was, and I would find out, end of story.

"So I illegally laid my hands on some Apparation textbooks."

"What? But you were..."

"Fourteen or so, yes. Ted, I did not tell you this and you did not hear it from me. Even now, after all that has happened, I could be severely punished. Even sent to Azkaban, if the jury is in an unforgiving mood. And there are too many people around who do not like our marriage, who'd love to cut me down to size, to run any risks, OK?

"So I worked away at Apparation. Theory first - practice later, every Hogsmeade day. Looking back, I am horrified at the risks I took. Not just breaking the law, but the great likelihood of Splinching myself... leaving part of myself behind. As it was, I only lost some of my toenails once." (Ted went pale, and instinctively looked down at his wife's pretty little feet. But that was stupid - there was nothing wrong with them, he had seen them often enough.) "It hurt like hell, and, until the nails regrew, I had to keep my feet covered and disguise the bleeding. But what was more important to me was that, after months and months of fruitless effort, I had managed to Apparate - and not over a small distance, but from one end of Hogsmeade to the other. The pain only served to teach me to focus more completely next time. And next time I intended to Apparate to Diagon Alley.

"That, itself, was concentrated insanity."

"Jesus, yes! You know they warn everyone about Apparation? Even fully grown wizards sometimes avoid Apparation altogether."

"Oh, absolutely. And they certainly prefer not to risk it over long distances. And I intended to do it from northern Scotland to southern England, a matter of maybe a thousand miles. I guess that the only reason why I ever managed it was that I did not realize how crazy I was."

For some reason, this touched him. He held her a little stronger, and smiled at her: "There's my Dromie - crazy as a bat on drugs and stubborn as a steel spar." She smiled back at him, and seemed to cuddle a little closer to his body, like a child seeking comfort.

"Well, anyway, next Hogsmeade weekend I walked through the gates of Hogwarts practically giggling to myself, fully intending to spend the afternoon, not in Hogsmeade, but in London. I managed it, too" - she smiled proudly at her husband. "Determination. Deliberation. Destination. I knew Diagon Alley very well, after all. I just focused my mind on one very definite place between two shops, with which I was particularly familiar - and whoosh! I was there.

"I remembered that Nymphadora spent a lot of her time meeting people in Diagon Alley, talking to them, getting herself known. So I hid my Hogwarts clothes - just so that nobody should ask me what a Hogwarts student was doing there - put on a nice robe I had taken with me, and walked around. It was not long before...

" *'Dora!'

" *'Dromie! What are you doing here?'

"She was surprised, but also rather scared. After casting a quick spell to make sure that it was really me, she whisked me out of the crowd and into her flat, which was a few hundred yards down the road.

"She was mad at me at first; she thought I had run away from Hogwarts, and was quite ready to send me back by main force. Looking back, too, I think there was an element of fear - those were dangerous times, and nobody knew it better than her. She did not like to see me where anyone could get at me. Hogwarts was one of the few places in the land where children could be really safe. It took me a while to make her believe that I really had done nothing more than Apparate from Hogsmeade, and that I really and truly was able to go back as soon as I pleased.

"The look she gave me then was, I guess, the first time I realized that I had done something really mad with my Apparation. For a few seconds, Nymphadora, my heroine, Hogwarts Head Girl, this person whom I had always imagined as the greatest of witches, was completely dumbfounded. She said that if I ever felt like visiting her again, I should do it by Portkey, and we contrived one there and then. Then she instructed me to keep it in Hogwarts, and never, for any reason, take it to my home or show it to Bella. Which I was not going to do in any case.

"From then on I was able to visit Nymphadora whenever I pleased, and my family knew nothing of it. Nor did most of Slytherin House. I would not be certain about old Slughorn, or about Dumbledore for that matter; from time to time they seemed to talk as though they expected me to understand more than I should.

"It turned out that I had caught Nymphadora just in time. A couple of weeks earlier, she had been co-opted into the Wizangemot." (Ted shook his head weakly. He had stopped keeping count of all the unlikelihoods.) "She was about to be inaugurated as a member, and if I had travelled to Diagon Alley even a week later, I would never have encountered her at all, except by luck. As a Wizangemot member, she had many duties, and took them seriously.

"As it is, I got into her confidence just as her plans for her career were beginning to ripen. She was not the youngest member ever of the Wizangemot, there had been younger wizards in the past, but she was remarkable; and there had been a widespread expectation that she would soon rise to important positions. But all that, in the eyes of the majority of wizarding politicians, had been placed into doubt by what they termed her extreme views.

"You see, she had not just spent her time there glad-handing people - is that how you say it? - and making herself popular. She had made as thorough a study of the rising Dark Power as she could. She had long since become aware of his goals, and since Hogwarts she had kept track of his deeds with anger and revulsion. As a matter of fact, that had been the big problem with Slughorn. He was more than willing to back her political career with all his influence, but she had made it clear that she would dedicate it to fighting the tyrant. In fact, she told me, that was why she wanted to go into politics in the first place: she wanted to fight Voldemort, and that seemed to offer her the best position to do so.

"That was what had bothered Slughorn - if he put his influence behind her, it would be as good as a declaration of war on the Dark Power. Slughorn was already doing what he conceived to be his best opposing the enemy in various ways, but as head of Slytherin he was unpleasantly close to many leading Death Eaters, and unwilling to expose himself in person. He had actually taught the Enemy himself, when he was a young man. Only when it became clear that she would go ahead with or without his support, did Dumbledore convince him to go all out for her. And it was just as well - it was only Slughorn's behind-the-scenes pressure that saved Nymphadora from being sacked when her articles on the Daily Prophet started taking a clear anti-Voldemort tinge.

"I visited her secretly several times. I think she was glad to have someone with whom she could speak in complete freedom, explaining her plans, arguing about her views, spontaneously, without any of the calculated silences and emphases that politics made necessary, and without any fear that it would go anywhere. But the more I heard, the more I was afraid for her, because when people got up Lord Voldemort's nose, he tended to use murder to pick it.

"And yet, for more than six years, one as journalist, three as journalist and Wizangemot member, and two and a bit as Minister, Nymphadora became to all wizards and witches the very image of defiance against the Dark Lord - and survived. Indeed, there were only two reported attempts at murder, and both were almost hilarious botches. I suspect that her luck was at least in part due to her very efficient house-elf Dnabskey. Certainly her defiance made her much more prominent than a very junior Wizangemot member had a right to be.

"Dnabskey? Oh yes... Dnabskey was important, poor creature. When Nymphadora first left her father's house, she was barely making enough money to rent her little flat. The best she could do was to make herself known and popular as much as she could, and hope that people did not pay too much attention to her poorly mended clothes and fourth-rate gear. She certainly could not afford help of any kind, let alone an expensive house-elf.

"One afternoon she took a trip down Knockturn Alley, to familiarize herself with the 'bad' part of town. She was very prudent, keeping her wand visibly in her fist, and her eyes well open. But she wanted to form an idea of this obscure area, and the people and things to be found in it. She had read a lot about it, and she wanted to put faces to the various data she had learned.

"Suddenly, she heard a kind of whimper coming from a sort of midden in an alley between two tall buildings. She looked carefully, trying not to look too interested. As she told it to me later, you could hardly tell what it was that feebly stirred in the dirt and caked animal blood, but an unreasonable hope seized her. Since she had moved out of her parents' home, she had had an ache for a house-elf of her own. On her own means, she might as well have wished for the Moon; and yet one single house-elf is very little for one of the great wizarding houses. We Blacks rarely had less than eight or ten, for instance. Nymphadora herself barely knew how to live without one; and she missed the companionship. When she had decided to live on her own, she had no idea how much she would feel the loneliness.

"Well, it actually was someone's house-elf, a female, thrown away like dirt and forgotten. (In view of something that will come up in a minute, Ted, I have to tell you that she had nothing to do with Abraxas Malfoy or the Dark Lord. Cruelty to house-elves is frequent enough, alas.) She was old, but even more than that, she was ruined, bearing the marks of abuse and torture and starvation all over her broken body. Some vile filth of an owner had used her to satisfy his vicious lusts and then cast her away to die. Nymphadora cast the mightiest Confundus Charm she could, so that nobody would notice that she was picking up someone else's rubbish and bearing it away.

"She took the pathetic creature to her own flat and kept her there in secret, doctoring her wounds as well as she could, and feeding her. And as soon as the elf was able to understand and speak, she asked: 'Miss... is you Dnabskey's mistress now?' Nymphadora had actually forgotten her first reason to pick up the elf; but without even having actually intended it, she had a house-elf of her own now.

"It is important to know this, Ted: even at the height of her power and glory, Nymphadora Black, Minister of Magic, only owned one house-elf, and that was someone else's cast-off. She was not rich, you know, and she never had been. Ever since she left her parents' house, she had spent as much gold as she made, first on her campaigning, then on researching the situation and designing solutions to urgent problems. She even cut her own salary as Minister once, because the gold had been needed elsewhere. So at the same time as she hosted great parties with the cream of wizarding society, or discussed economics and business with the Goblins, she often had hardly enough spending money to tide her over the month.

"Dnabskey was devoted to her even beyond the limit of ordinary house-elfdom. And Nymphadora rewarded her with implicit trust. Dnabskey heard as much of her views and plans as any of us. She worked herself to the bone for Nymphadora, and it was because of her astonishing labours, that Ministry parties and private functions always looked as though all the Elves in Hogwarts had been working at it together.

"Well, I guess I told you where this story is going. Nymphadora became Minister. She had the talent and the will, and the more she was in touch with the facts, the more she felt certain that the current administration was inadequate. The clarity of her views and the force of her character made her a leader in the Wizangemot as quickly as she had become one in Slytherin years before.

"And yet when her big opportunity came, it did not came as the result of any careful plan, but of an unplanned, even dangerous outburst. Some appeaser or other had risen in the Assembly and made a speech in favour of being understanding with 'opposition parties' and making moves to address some of their 'complaints'; and suddenly Nymphadora could take it no more. She rose in fury, all six foot of her, and broke into speech, shredding all chamber regulations and procedures in the process. She had a powerful alto, trained in public speaking, and when she wanted to, she could be heard above a hurricane. And this time she went for the jugular.

" *How many more lies do you intend to tell yourselves, my masters and mistresses? Or are you really so deluded as to believe any of the verbiage that has been poisoning the air of this noble hall? Are you seriously telling us, masters and mistresses, are you seriously telling yourselves, that to escape the truth of our situation as it is, to keep gassing about mediations and peaceful solutions, is not going to condemn dozens of wizards and witches and thousands of Muggles to death by torture? Is there a single one among you who seriously believes that this enemy can be negotiated out of his blood thirst and out of his cruelty?'

"There was total silence. Nobody seemed capable of rising to demand her to be silent, as the rules would have required; and perhaps people were beginning to understand that something historic was about to take place. Nymphadora thundered on: *It is not as though we did not know about the ways of Dark Lords. There are people sitting here who remember how friendly and willing to compromise Gellert Grindelwald was. There are people who suffered at his hands, and people who took part in his defeat. Has that experience taught the survivors nothing?

" *Gods, what an age we live in! We know he is recruiting; we know he is killing; his agents sit among us as we speak, and take down names, to go into even longer lists of those to be killed in future; and we, the mighty Wizangemot of England, we the heirs of Myrddyn and Dr.Dee, do nothing! We pretend that Abraxas Malfoy' - there was a collective gasp - 'is here because he likes us; that Augustus Avery has a serious desire for peace and reconciliation; that the dozen or more agents whose names are perfectly known to anyone who followed events without actually blinding themselves, that the dozen or more who have sold their souls to Voldemort, have our interests at heart!

" 'Tell me, Abraxas Malfoy, with whom did you and your wife confer in an anonymous flat in Morden last night? Whom do you secretly harbour in your manor, and who is it whose experiments already cost you two house-elves, whom you had to replace at great cost? A cost you refused to charge to your... guest, in order to show your... friendship for him?

" 'Oh, you are surprised that I know these things? Everyone knows them, Abraxas; everyone knows whom you and your cronies here serve; they do not speak because they fear for their lives. It is not your cleverness or that of your master that they respect; everything is known, everything seeps out; it is your brutality. For that, and for no other reason, they do not call you murderer and traitor to your face.

" 'And if you need more evidence - tell me, Augustus Avery, why did you purchase Snodgrass Manor Farm in Lancashire in secret, and whose gold did you use, since we all know that you cannot afford it on your family's resources? What are two dangerous aliens such as Antonin Dolohov and Valentino Succurro doing as your secret guests, having entered Britain illegally? Why did your man Sanderling - whom you sent to avoid showing your face - buy enough potion ingredients from five separate Knockturn Alley shops, to make enough Polyjuice and Command Potion for an army? You should have realized it by now, Avery - you do not have any friends, even in Knockturn Alley; even there, you are hated and feared, and those who grin to your face would do anything to avoid your master rising to further power. They know that he is bad news to them as well as to us. Or perhaps you have finally realized that - since your party's propaganda has suddenly acquired a strong law-and-order tinge - and Snodgrass Farm seems very suitable to grow most potion ingredients without having to make embarrassing purchases that leave paper trails.

" 'I repeat: all these things are known. When you are sure you are not being heard, my masters and mistresses, you discuss them in the corners. And that being the case, who can be mad enough or stupid enough to think that these men and women can be reasoned with? When the killing is already going on, and the resources are being mustered for further killing?

" 'And what would be negotiate about? There is nothing we can give them that would satisfy them. Of their pathetic pureblood excuses I will say nothing; it is enough to say that their leader is Tom Riddle, the half-blood son of Merope Gaunt and a Muggle' - at that point there was a collective gasp, and many people rose; but Nymphadora Black went relentlessly on - 'and that those of us who knew the Gaunts know that they were the very dregs of wizardkind, an instance of degeneration rather than of the value of pure blood. Such a leader for a party that claims to stand for the dignity of wizardkind! Such honesty in his claims; such intelligence in his followers!

" 'My masters, whatever you may think of the issue of blood purity - and I am a proud child of the House of Black - it should be obvious, cryingly obvious, that the party of Tom Riddle Voldemort and his followers do not really believe in it. It is their bait to catch followers, and their excuse to indulge their blood-lust. Motiveless, vicious lust for pain and death is, alas, not an unknown feature of the worse wizards and witches; as a matter of fact, you and I know that it is largely to curb it and protect the world against it that Wizangemots, Ministries and wizarding schools exist. This is what he offers to the most devoted of his followers, and that is why they are devoted to him: pain, torture and death. They live on the death of others. You might say that they feed on it.' This was the origin of the expression 'Death Eaters', although nobody now remembers it. 'That is why we have a duty to resist them. It is to resist their likes that this noble assembly was established.'

"Her fist came down on the board before her, and in the breathless silence, it made a crack like thunder. 'We must resist them! How can there still be people who can convince themselves that any common ground between us and this gang of murderers can exist? I ask you, masters and mistresses, I ask you first and last: how long is this going to go on? Just how long is everyone going to cower in the corners and pretend? Just how long do we have to keep up this pathetic mask of calmness before we start laughing bitterly in each other's face? How long, shades of our ancestors, how long?

" 'And how shall we face, when our time comes, the shades of those who faced Malagigi, Vivian the Great, Conan Dubh, Eumelos the Immortal, Cagliostro - faced them, aye, and defeated them? For these men may kill us; but it is not death that we should really dread. It is what comes after death - when we shall have to see our fathers eye to eye; when we shall have to justify our behaviour and explain why we allowed people to be murdered and tortured merely because we, ourselves, preferred an easy life.'

"So ended her speech. The contempt with which she said those last words, an easy life, went down in legend. For a while, you could make any wizard or witch laugh just by asking with a bland expression: 'Do you prefer an easy life, then?' or saying 'I love an easy life, myself.' But at the time, they stunned the Wizangemot into complete silence. For one, two, three minutes, nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

"Then Minister Sewardston rose and removed his badge and ring of office, placing them on the table before him. He said quietly, but not too quietly to be heard: 'It seems that the policy of the Ministry towards current dissidents is being called into question before the Wizangemot. I therefore place my office in the hands of this august assembly. You may, my masters and mistresses, return it to me - if you approve of my efforts - or else offer them to anyone whose policies seem to you more suitable to the age.'

"Nymphadora did not say a word. She rose and walked to the centre of the hall, and came to a halt standing face to face with Sewardston. The visual impression was overwhelming: Sewardston, middle-aged, tired-looking, balding, but with a mess of thin, dry, stringy, uncombable hair, looking somehow dusty and defeated in the afternoon light; and Nymphadora Black, tall, straight, young, self-controlled (she had pulled herself back together after the fury of her speech) and astonishingly handsome, flashing like a drawn sword. It was to everyone the very picture of a decent but tired man, unsuited to a time of darkness and violence, faced with a force of nature, irresistible in her power and defiance - such a person as people pray for in times of trouble, and rarely find. The Speaker of the assembly rose and made a call for votes for Minister Sewardston; hands rose slowly and sluggishly. Then it was votes for Witan Member Black; and a forest of right arms seemed to rise. When the count was made, the difference in number was not so great; but the different enthusiasm of Sewardston's and Nymphadora's supporters had made it look overwhelming.

"Malfoy and the others had already made themselves scarce; but Avery, who was not clever, had remained in the Hall. And as Nymphadora moved to take the Minister's place and marks, Avery rose in turn and said, 'Wait a minute!'

"Nymphadora gave him a glance of blazing contempt, and said: 'You have something to say?'

" 'You can bet your life I do! In fact, that is what you have done - bet your life. You have made the most hideous charges against me and my honour in public, and it seems you have purchased office at the price of my honour. I want it back!'

"Nymphadora's eyes narrowed. 'So... are you calling me out?'

" 'To a Wizard's Duel. Yes, Ma'am!'

"Nymphadora said nothing. She reached Avery with two long strides, and then, without warning, hit him with all her strength, on the corner of the jaw. Then a second punch, in the stomach; then a third, again to the side of the head. Avery fell like a sack of potatoes.

"Nymphadora said clearly: 'You have had your duel, Avery. As the challenged party, I had the choice of weapons, and I never read anywhere that I was obliged to inform you of it. It is only mental laziness that imagines that wizards will only ever fight with wands.' She looked at one of the guards and said, 'Take him away.' In the face of everyone, even before she had actually picked up the badge and ring, let alone been sworn in, Nymphadora Black was acting like a Minister in full charge. Everyone took notice.

"Nonetheless, her official inauguration could not actually take place until at least the next day; and she knew that. I think that she must have spent the night between chewing her nails, because she knew that every second that passed gave the enemy time to prepare for anything she might do. That was clear by her inauguration speech.

" 'My fellow wizards and witches, those of you who called on me to take up this office did so because they believed that we are in a state of undeclared war and that resolute action is needed. Nonetheless, in order to respect the laws laid down by our fathers, I have not taken up the powers and responsibilities of office until the law decreed I should.

" 'What may have been lost by this delay can be seen by the one action I was able to take yesterday, as soon as the votes for me were cast, when an unintelligent member of the opposite party thought to stop me with a personal challenge. He imagined that a challenge to my personal honour would be more important to me than the duties I was about to take up on behalf of the public and the laws. As you know, I proved him wrong, and was thus able to remove a plague spot from the Wizangemot.

" 'The others, however, were less foolish; and I have no doubt that, while I prepared in my apartments for the terrible task I had been called to, they were working all night to remove the evidence of their guilt and adapt to changed circumstances. I am sure, for instance, that when I unleash the Aurors to investigate certain great mansions, certain farms, and certain families, without restrictions except for the basic legal rights which even the worst villains enjoy - they will have trouble finding any evidence of their guilt, any of the engines of power that the enemy has been building up, or any of the murderous secret guests that were being entertained at some of the most respected houses in the land. Portkeys have been busy across Europe; and I know for a fact that the worst of these guests is now safe in a lawless forest in Albania.

" 'I do not regret this, however. First, because no swoop however extensive could have defeated the enemy. They are too rooted in the land; their complicities and support reach too far. Indeed, a sudden and vast sequence of arrests might have led the public to feel a false sense of safety. It is important, indeed essential, to realize that this will not be a short war.

" 'Second and more important, nothing could be worse than to start the war by disregarding the laws. These are the laws that our fathers laid down, that we ourselves contributed to, to which we all owe our allegiance; and if it is not for them that we fight, then we are only fighting for ourselves - and to that extent we cannot be distinguished from the enemy party. My fellow wizards and witches: I have been called to the highest office in Britain to deal with a major breakdown in public order, but you have my word that I will do everything within my power to act within the law, support the law, obey the law. In a time of war and disorder, I cannot say for certain that I never will go beyond them; indeed, that is something that the best of us, in the most peaceful lives, could not promise for the next two minutes. But I will neither forget nor deny the laws; I will defend them; and if and when I am forced to act outside them, I will not defend the fact, but will do whatever is in my power to undo the damage done, as soon as I can.

" 'For you must not think, fellow wizards and witches, that I take lightly the demands I will have to make of you and of myself, or the troubled waters into which I intend to pilot the ship of state of Wizarding Britain. I do not promise an easy life; I fear that we shall see more, rather than less, death and grief and despair in the land, until this evil is eradicated. Resistance on our part will only multiply their ferocity; until they are taken apart, knife by knife, claw by claw. And I do not think that any of us doubts that that will be hard and expensive work. And I will know that I am in some sense accountable for each person I will not be able to save. But those who called me to office estimated, as I do, that violence and mass death were in our future whatever we did. And if and when one of us falls at the hands of the enemy, it will make all the difference in the world, if we can say, not: 'He died pointlessly, a random victim of cruelty,' but 'He died in the great struggle against cruelty, injustice and lawlessness.'

" 'And more importantly still, that is what they, who shall go before us in the lands beyond death, will be able to say when they meet their fathers face to face - when they meet Justice Itself face to face.'

"She spoke mostly in a low, meditative, sad voice, and almost nobody had the bad taste to clap their hands; but a deep murmur of approval went around the crowds who had gathered to hear a historic speech. But what nobody noticed at the time was the sparse and thin attendance of Aurors and security wizards of all kinds. Even before the speech was spoken, they had been ordered on the raids she mentioned. It was ordered that the actual attacks on various mansions and flats would begin at the exact moment when she took her oath of office - giving the enemy as little free time as possible, and perhaps catching a few while they were distracted by wizarding wireless broadcasts. Nymphadora may have sworn to respect the law, but she did so in a very Slytherin sort of way.

"The next day she published her First Decree of Resistance. It was a detailed scheme for using the resources of the Ministry, including St.Mungo's and other services, to detect, capture and prosecute Death Eaters, and of sentencing them in such a way as to deprive them of power and gold. Among other things, it placed the property of all detected Death Eaters into Ministry trusteeship, thus placing their former dependents and heirs under Ministry control. The families of Death Eaters would not be deprived of their hereditary property, but placed in a situation where they had to satisfy the Ministry leadership to keep it. It was clearly stated that the Decree, except for the civil and penal sentences passed under its terms, would only last for the stated emergency period, and would cease to be valid once the war was declared over. Nymphadora clearly meant to keep her promise to uphold and defend the law.

"That was followed by a series of appointments. The most remarkable was that of Barty Crouch as Chief Internal Inspector to the Ministry - a new post, charged with insuring that the Ministry did not, under the pressure of war, neglect its ordinary duties to Britain's wizards and witches. I was surprised at this appointment - everyone was. Crouch, before Nymphadora entered the Wizangemot, had been the loudest and boldest opponent of the party of fear. Everyone expected him to be given a position of military leadership. But when I spoke with her, she explained it to me:

" 'He has no imagination, 'Dromie. When I interviewed him about future policies, all he could think of was doubled and trebled penalties for Death Eaters and suspending the laws. I felt like shaking him and shouting at him, Dammit, man, can't you suggest something that will weaken their organization or their position? We can't punish them if we can't get them! However, I had to give him some important post, or it would have been a waste of a prominent and powerful magician. So I thought of this. It is important, after all, that the Ministry continue to perform its ordinary duties. Once I explained it to him, he agreed. I did not discuss his imagination, of course' - and we both laughed.

"Nymphadora then entered into negotiations with the Goblins. It was a long, secretive and vexatious process, during which, she said, she often felt much sympathy with those of her ancestors who had flayed Goblins alive or roasted them. But the result, some three months later, was the Second Decree of Resistance, which placed the resources of Gringotts and other Goblin assets at the disposal of the Ministry in order to strangle financially the enemy party. Arrests, defection and clashes multiplied after this, because the enemy felt the coils of the Ministry clinging to them ever tighter. There also were several attempts to break down the legislation by legal means - but they achieved nothing except to expose those of the Brotherhood of Law-Wizards who had overmuch sympathy for the enemy.

"There was increasing enthusiasm and self-belief among the part of wizardkind that seriously hated Voldemort. Dozens, hundreds of owls reached the Ministry, most of them full of approval of the Decrees of Resistance and pleasure in the arrest of known troublemakers that the previous regime had allowed to become strong. Nymphadora had them all answered individually - did so herself as much as she could - and visited many of the senders to assess their attitudes. Her letters always notified that the Ministry would remember the sender's feelings, and might call on their help when force became necessary.

"A particularly touching one came from James Defreeze. He said that he had been among the first to suffer at the hands of the enemy, that he was grateful that the deaths of his relatives and other unimportant personages were no longer being swept under the carpet, and that if and when the Ministry needed his services, they were theirs for the asking. Nymphadora took particular pains over answering that one.

"Meanwhile, the enemy was making his continued presence known by increasingly showy and cruel Muggle massacres. They did not dare face the Ministry or an aroused populace, so they used this cowardly means to let us know that they were alive and well.

"However, Nymphadora was resolute that the enemy should be fought on every front; and that included their standing among average witches and wizards. She made two speeches about the murder of Muggles. The second especially, which described the hideous assault on a primary girls' school in which more than seventy little Muggle children were slaughtered (Muggle newspapers put it down to a fire), was immensely effective. Wizards might not care about Muggles, but there is not one sane human being who can contemplate the slaughter of little children without revulsion; and many John Q. Wizards and Jane Q. Witches who had taken the slaughter of adult Muggles with a certain complacency, were reduced to tears and to rage by the Minister's account of what was done to some of the girls.

"That proved a serious error on the part of the enemy. In the next two or three days, no less than eight undetected Death Eaters were handed over to the Ministry by their own disgusted friends and acquaintances; one woman was given up by her own children. It was followed by rumours of purges and severe discipline within the ranks; apparently Lord Voldemort claimed not to have ordered the assault on the school or known of his results. Over this, I had a fistfight with Bella, who believed him, and she broke my arm. My mother refused to perform any healing charms, and I was forced to Apparate to Horace Slughorn - who was in London on business - and ask him to help.

"But the Death Eaters had to return to the dangerous tactic of assaulting wizards, especially Ministry supporters. They proved predictably good at hit-and-run, and we took losses. But all the time, the Second and Third Decrees of Resistance were working across the ranks of British wizardkind (the Third Decree corrected some details of the previous two and added measures against Muggle-hunting), discovering Death Eaters, capturing hoards of gold and weapons, making it harder and harder for them to swim within ordinary British wizarding society like fishes in their native sea. Wizarding support, indifference or fear had been the strength of the enemy until recently; now indifference was fading, support was becoming hesitant or disgusted, and fear was turning to rage.

"Nymphadora was convinced that there was a place of refuge for Death Eaters who disappeared or fled. That is what she wanted to achieve: squeeze them out of their various hiding places into a single fortress where they could be found and engaged as an army. And as the third year of the Decrees of Resistance began, she began to be sure that the Death Eaters were fleeing to some hidden place in England. All that was left was to discover where the Death Eater redoubt lay.

"On July 6, it happened. Ministry troops - two patrols of Aurors backed by a small number of Hit Wizards - were ambushed near the village of Langwarton, in the Yorkshire Pennines, and slaughtered. Half a dozen, however, escaped the trap, and reported to the nearest Ministry bureau. In ten minutes the news had reached Nymphadora.

"An hour after that, two dozen Auror air patrols, each stiffened with one or two Hit Wizards, were exploring the area, with instructions to make themselves scarce at the first sign of trouble. The Ministry wanted information, not heroics. Once the enemy had been found, it would be engaged with every bit of force available to Wizarding Britain; meanwhile, the Aurors were only there to observe and report.

"In spite of these orders, no less than four Auror patrols vanished during the night. Other patrols found a few corpses on the hillsides, all of them belonging to Death Eaters. What happened to the unfortunate Aurors and Hit Wizards may perhaps never be known.

"Meanwhile, the Ministry sent summoning owls to every one of the thousands of wizards and witches who had, as I mentioned, offered help and support. Now was the time; everyone who wanted to help must come to Diagon Alley - and come ready to fight. . As the surviving patrols sent increasingly detailed accounts of the area around Langwarton and of likely enemy positions (Langwarton was just the other side of a mountain from the notorious Snodgrass Manor Farm, by the way), the Ministry swiftly gathered and organized its forces. I went there myself: I was of age, freshly graduated from Hogwarts, and had been itching for a fight for a long time.

"On the morning of July 7, the Minister for Magic strode across Diagon Alley, summoning wizards and witches to war. She had always been tall, but now she seemed even taller; in her simple white and black robes, with a coronet on her head and the insignia of office on her finger and chest, she seemed like a giant, like a goddess of war. There was no doubt in my mind that the House of Black had reached its height in this magnificent woman. On her right walked Albus Dumbledore, Susan Bones and Minerva McGonagall, on her left Bartimaeus Crouch, Millicent Bagnold and Horace Slughorn; and their house-elves carried their flags behind them and blew trumpets and war-horns.

"Everyone who was summoned came. People came out of Diagon Alley houses and stores in streams, and took their places in the growing human river that followed the seven leaders down the road. I was only one year out of Hogwarts at the time, but as I was the Minister's cousin and her pet - and everyone knew that - I was allowed to walk behind her. It was not long before we were being followed by an army. We saw James Defreeze, Benjamin Brookstanton with his cousin Rupert the Axe-banger, Ibrahim al-Qahiri, Tony Russell - the survivors of dozens of massacres, now with the chance of justice about to be placed in their own hands. It was strange how other volunteer fighters tended to leave them alone, whispering to each other about them and what they had survived when they thought they could not be seen.

"Sirius, who was sixteen, absconded from Hogwarts, though McGonagall nearly caught him. For the first and only time, he left his three friends - James Potter, Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin - behind; he could not expose them to the risk of war, but he could not desert his sister, either.

"And you were there, too, Ted. I know you do not remember it... that as far as you know, nothing of this ever happened. Let me just go on telling the story, and you will understand, I hope... I just wish you could remember me as I remember you, proud and handsome and brave in the morning sun. I guess it was then that I knew I would marry you - Muggleborn or not. But I was still bound to Black ways and Black ideas, and so I was torn, and would not admit it to myself.

"As I said, I was walking right behind the Minister, and I could hear her and the other leaders. Dumbledore had been taking in the enormous number of volunteers, and seemed bothered by it. 'Isn't this a bit of overkill, Minister?' he asked her.

" 'The way I see it, Headmaster, we have to do more than just win. This is the second Dark Lord claimant in less than forty years; and we heard of a few more who had the ambition though not the power. They are appearing much too often, and they are finding it much too easy to attract followers. So, I think we need overkill. I think we need to stamp a wholesome fear of the law, the public, and the Ministry, on any future bright boy with bright ideas.'

"Dumbledore nodded, and I listened with astonishment. She had been meaning it all along, then! She had intended to put forth the whole power of British wizarding society for a victory that would serve as a lesson for centuries to come. I looked at her, and my heart swelled within me.

"Then we found another wonder. On her instructions, the Ministry had created a secret path from Knockturn Alley to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. It started from the confiscated store of Borgin and Burkes, and reached right into the platform without need to go through the Muggle train station. Our leaders opened the tunnel before us, and entered it without fear; and we followed them. That morning, more than five thousand armed witches and wizards marched in serried ranks beneath the streets of London, and nobody knew; not even the watchful goblins in their dragon caves hung with gold.

"The Hogwarts Express was waiting for us at the Platform. Its name plate had been altered to 'The Voldemort Express', and when Dumbledore saw the change, he laughed almost till he cried. That had an effect on everyone else: the moment of fear, the moment when all doubts and afterthoughts had to be cast to the four winds and everyone would be personally committed, was turned into a joke, and people climbed the Voldemort Express laughing. Even some of the survivors' group wore broad grins - though maybe it was the thought of revenge being at last only a train ride away.

"A harsh toot broke from the locomotive, and the slow build-up of power and speed began. A chung! - then another chung!; then a faster one; then chung... chung... chung chung chung chungchungchungchung, till all these sounds mixed into a roar, and the train was leaping forwards through the beautiful green English fields, ripping through the air like the hammer of Thor, raging fire in its belly and hurricanes of steam pouring from its funnel. Wizards and witches leaned out of the windows, raised their wands in the air, and sang; and the strongest among us flew above it like a cloud of power. First of them all, the Minister could be seen riding her broomstick a little ahead, and it seemed as if the rails followed her path.

"And then we realized that they really did. A black, enormous cast-iron castle suddenly frowned at us across a valley, on the tops of three hills; and at a swish from the Minister's wand, the rails whipped around - and the train was suddenly pointing to the very centre of the great, grim fortress.

"Nymphadora looked behind her at us, waved her wand in the air, and pointed it where the rails met the fortress; and we all understood and pointed ours. A ferocious firestorm, something that magic had never perhaps done before, burst from five thousand wands, and the train smashed straight into the fortress - and the cast iron wall exploded, ripped apart by power and magic, as its defenders desperately fled.

"The train came to a halt in the middle of the magical enclosure. Nymphadora pointed her wand at herself, and performed the Sonorus charm. One second later, her voice rang out, loud enough to be heard across a county:

IN THE NAME OF THE LAW, YOU ARE ALL UNDER ARREST. IF YOU RESIST THE MINISTRY FORCES, FORCE WILL BE USED TO ANY EXTENT NECESSARY.

"But nobody on either side imagined that the Death Eaters would surrender without a fight. And so the Ministry forces started pouring out of both sides of the train. Every one of them wore something white to signify their allegiance. It was incredible; there seemed to be no end to them. My guess is that the enemy had maybe seven or so hundred fighters against our five thousand; they never stood a chance, and the fact that the train had broken their formation in two made them even more helpless. They had their surprises prepared - they unleashed Manticores and Lethifolds against us (the Aurors later found evidence that they had been working on ways to bring Nundus and dragons into the country) - but it was no good. Every monster they let loose was torn to pieces by ten, twenty, thirty wands blasting at once. Every Death Eater had to duel twenty enemies. They were drowning like rabbits in a flood. And while the mass of volunteers was flooding the castle, nearly the whole Corps of Aurors was patrolling the skies and the valley around, sealing it against any attempted escape. The Aurors had many dead to avenge, and they would not let so much as a mouse - as a bug - flee the trap.

"I wanted to see it all, so I had risen above the battlefield to look - and I suddenly saw a tremendous flash of darkness, and a streaking, shrieking black comet hurling itself at the Minister, spitting smoke and tar. In a moment, Voldemort had destroyed Nymphadora's broomstick and brought her down on the ground, crashing above her with the impact of a meteor.

"For a second, I was terrified; and the fight seemed to die out on all sides. Then a fierce red blast drove Voldemort back, and Nymphadora was standing there, surrounded by smoke and broken rocks - as if falling yards down on to sheer rock, with the power of the greatest sorcerer alive driving her down, were no more than a minor accident.

"Voldemort was not worried either. The two flung themselves at each other with waves of savage spells pouring from their wands. At times it was hard even to perceive where each of them was, what they were doing. It was a frightful duel, and I do not think I will see another like it. The elements of reality shook and raged around them. For the first and I hope the last time in my life, I saw fire in its naked form, not the delicate little image of Earth, that may boil a pan of water or burn a building down, but the power that rages in stars and galaxies, that makes and destroys, the hand of the gods at work across the universe. I saw gates of annihilation being opened and closed, and death itself manipulated and denied by two masters whose power was beyond my reckoning. I knew I was in danger of my life merely by looking at that struggle from a distance, but I could no more have turned my eyes away than I could have stopped breathing by my own volition. Then I raised my eyes... above and around the contending champions I thought I could see the great figure of Salazar Slytherin, from whose House both heroine and villain had come, and the lineage of the House of Black, whose greatest heir was fighting for her life and for the future of mankind now.

"And then Voldemort made his mistake. Having broken one of her attacks, he snarled at her: 'You are not the one to kill me, young woman. You are doomed to lose - like everyone else.' And even from a distance, I could see Nymphadora's eyes narrow. She had understood what he was saying.

"Without warning, she brought her wand down in a great scything arc, across Voldemort's neck; and the monster's long neck was cut cleanly, as if by a guillotine. Black and rotting blood spurted; his head wobbled, and fell off, and Nymphadora bent over and picked it up even as the rest of his body crashed ruinously down.

"I thought I heard a great sigh go up. Then I looked at Nymphadora again - and I realized that the thing in her hand was alive and glowering, looking at her with hatred.

"She looked back at it coolly. 'You should not have trusted the fates, Tom Riddle,' she said aloud, so that everyone could hear, 'they are deceptive. If I cannot kill you, I can have you kept in the Ministry in pieces, until we find the killer decreed for you by fate. We will find your Horcrux, too - oh yes, monster,' she concluded, 'I guessed long ago how you made yourself unkillable.'"

"All around her silence had fallen. Many Death Eaters lay on the grass like puppets with their strings cut; others were allowing themselves to be dragged away without resistance, their eyes all on the one sight - the severed head and the body lying at the victor's feet.

"I wonder whether victory always ends up being so depressing? We had set out singing and laughing in the sunlight; and now, in spite of the danger successfully navigated, I think I can say it - all our spirits started sinking. Everyone had seen the horror of Voldemort's beheading; and in spite of our overwhelming superiority, there had been losses - dead and wounded. And when the Minister ordered to secure and register everyone who had been found in the fortress, we started unmasking the enemy, we found...

"We had understood, of course, that this was a fratricidal war; that we would find relatives, friends, colleagues, old schoolmates, among the enemy forces. But to know it in theory is one thing, and to face a man you had known, trusted, even loved... Barty Crouch had been fighting his own son. I tell you, Ted, no face is more hideous than the face of treachery. We had trusted these people; and they had conspired to murder and enslave us.

"And as if it wasn't enough, some of us had to go down into the dungeons to see what Voldemort and his monsters had been doing in secret ... Ted, you do not want to be told what we found. Believe me, you don't. The thought that Voldemort is at large now, that what I remember there is still being done now - even worse perhaps - I tell you, it makes you wonder why the Earth does not split open and destroy all mankind, rather than have to bear such things!

"That sort of thing does something to you, Ted my love. Even if you have won, even if you are in the right, even if you have done your part to put an end to the evil - it soils you. You feel guilty, even if you are not. You can see, I tell you, see the eyes of all the ones you did not save - their dead eyes, desperate eyes, empty sockets, howling out at you.

"I think you can imagine, then, our relief - mine, and Sirius', and even Nymphadora's - when she drew up the list of the arrested and accused, and there was not a single Black among them. I for one was absolutely dreading it. Especially since I knew that if anyone was going to be involved, it was not some distant cousin, but my own sister. When I saw that the name of Bellatrix Black could not be found anywhere, I nearly fell on my knees and cried with gratitude.

"Through all this, the Minister had continued to hold the horrid severed head by her left hand, caring nothing for the glimpses of blazing hatred it shot at her. Behind her, her house-elf, Dnabskey, floated the severed trunk ahead of himself, using House-Elf magic.

"Dnabskey, as I told you, was more than a house-elf to Nymphadora: she was a friend. So we were not surprised when Nymphadora committed both Voldemort's body and his head to Dnabskey, ordering her to keep them separate and to convey to the Ministry an order to encase the body in stone and place the head in an enchanted, Imperviused glass jar. Once we were sure we had thrown enough of the secret places of the castle and captured all the defenders, Nymphadora cast a Rusting Spell on its walls; this would destroy them slowly and with the minimum of effort, and leave the dungeons intact for further exploration - a few hours' raiding could certainly not have exhausted what Voldemort and his accomplices had spent years doing and concealing. An Auror company was left in charge of the place, with orders to explore every nook and cranny, question and release any prisoner, disenchant any enchantment left, and make detailed reports; the Minister made arrangements for the incarceration and interrogation of the prisoners, and formally dismissed all the enlisted witches and wizards with a brief speech of thanks. Then we all boarded the train for the journey back - two of the wagons being reserved for prisoners and guards.

"The further we got from that place of horror, the more we felt our spirits rise. The Minister summoned Barty Crouch, Millicent Bagnold, a couple of other bureaucrats, and Horace Slughorn, to discuss the reorganization of the Ministry from a war footing to a peacetime one, and they spent the rest of their journey in this deeply boring but necessary discussion, while the rest of us talked, made jokes, or rested. I saw them getting off at King's Cross and walking off together, still discussing organizational details.

"Worried that I might not have the chance again, I rushed at Nymphadora and hugged her. She looked at her colleagues with an embarrassed smile and said: 'Well, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps we had better carry on this discussion tomorrow. It is getting late, is it not?' They all assented. Barty Crouch, I noticed, looked as if all the blood had been taken out of him - discovering his son among the Death Eaters had really done a job on him.

" 'Come along, kid,' said Nymphadora after the others had gone, 'I think we could both do with an ice cream.'

"We sat down at a small kind of coffee bar up the road from the station, with a couple of large ice cream cups before us. Nymphadora was looking meditative.

" 'I really ought to apologize for calling you kid, 'Dromie,' she started, more or less out of nowhere. 'You are an adult all right. It's being a beanpole,' she said, referring to her height. 'It gets difficult not to look down on others a bit.'

" 'Oh, no, don't worry. I'm not offended. Besides, I don't know whether I even feel like I am an adult.'

" 'Oh, you are, you are. That's the way things happen: they happen as you do not look, and you suddenly wonder where all the time has gone... You are an adult, all right.'

"I had a feeling that she was really reflecting on what had happened that day, and she almost immediately confirmed it. 'I'm going to resign, you know.'

" 'Are you?' I said in astonishment. 'Why? There has never been a Minister like you...'

" 'As a matter of fact, there have been - you ought not to have slept through History of Magic,' she said with a grin. 'Besides, the point with everything I did was to bring things back to normal. I wanted an end to the murderer and his mates. Now that it is done, I cannot justify to myself keeping power, when someone else could do it as well or perhaps better.'

" 'That's what you think,' I said. I hated the thought of her stepping down and becoming just another witch. 'But if you do, what do you want to do?'

" 'I'm not quite sure,' she answered. 'I would like to avoid the spotlight for a while, though. Let my successors make their own mistakes without me interfering. Go and do something completely different. I kind of like the thought of writing or becoming some sort of artist or musician. I might even try to find out whether I really like boys at all.' She gave a weak grin. 'Do you know that I never...?'

" 'No!' I said.

" 'Yes.'

" 'But how on Earth...?'

" 'Well, I had an image to preserve, for one thing. And never any time for personal relationships. And I was always short of money...'

"I looked at her from top to toe and back again, from her long elegant feet to the shiny black hair on her head. 'That would never have mattered, you know,' I said with convinction. 'You are beautiful. Boys would crawl over broken glass to get at you.'

" 'That's what you think, is it?' she said, with the kind of secret sad smile that comes from a sour inner joke. I had the impression that something must have gone wrong with her and relationships at some point, and then she never had had the time or desire to try again. I felt suddenly depressed, and did not want to go on with that discussion any further.

"I guess Nymphadora was feeling embarrassed too, because she made a diplomatic excuse and let me go home. Not that I was not worried about the welcome I would get. I doubted that my parents, let alone Bellatrix, would regard the defeat of Voldemort as anything but a disaster. I expected, to say the least, to meet some anger.

Instead of which, I found everyone agog for information. 'Well, see the conquering heroine come,' said Bella when she saw me. I could not tell whether she was being sarcastic or not; her expression was unreadable. I was questioned all evening about events in the battle. When I got to the point where Voldemort had been beheaded, my father snapped his fingers. 'So simple!' he said in a wondering tone.

At the end of the evening, as we were all going to our beds, my mother dropped the bombshell: "We are all invited at Orion and Walburga's at twelve o'clock tomorrow. Nymphadora is going to be there as well."

" 'What!' - I said before I could control myself, 'they have made peace with her, then?'

" 'So it would seem.'

"And indeed, I thought as I went to sleep that day, it would make sense. The House of Black had the good luck of having a member who had been the leader in the victory. Their support of the Dark Lord was not widely known, and whatever the story behind Bellatrix' no-show at Langwarton, it had kept them from a most unpleasant publicity. The only thing that nagged at me was that it seemed out of character.

"Orion and Walburga's house, when we got there, showed every sign of a major job of cleaning and decoration. It shone as if every house-elf in the place had gone over it half a dozen times with a lens. The front door gaped open, with shining flowering white lily plants in pots on both sides; it was clear that a ceremonial occasion had been prepared for. Only, as I was walking up to the front steps, I felt as if something were whipping past me. You know what I mean: as if you were caught in a strong wind and felt clothes and stuff being blown whipping past you. But it was not something bodily that I felt; and as a matter of fact, there was very little wind.

"I entered the great dining room. We were nearly the last - all the Black clan was gathered there.

"Now, Ted, I should have got the danger signals then, and acted while I still could. If, perhaps, I could - if that sense of stuff whipping past you did not prove that their spell had already been cast and finished and that now only the effects remained. I do not know, Ted, and I never will. I could possibly research the spell they used, but I do not want to - there are things sane people ought not to know. But maybe I could still have done something - and I should have known that there was something terribly wrong, when I saw all those Blacks just sitting there. But I did not.

"That is where upbringing counts, Ted. A normal person is invited to what they suppose to be dinner; they are not on good terms with those who invite them; they come in and see the whole family sitting down - but no visible preparations for any meal, no knives or forks or dishes or hors-d'oeuvres or bread or flowered centrepieces or anything. Surely you begin to look around for trouble? But we were Black children. We had grown up with that atmosphere of oppressive judgment and disapproval. It was nasty - but it felt familiar. There was nothing new about it, and therefore nothing to be feared - a wholly mistaken syllogism, but an emotionally convincing one.

"The bodiless sense of things rushing past us, trashing and whipping, of loose ends being torn and falling around us, was growing, if anything, stronger. And when I sat down among all these Blacks, I had the most extraordinary double perception - all these Blacks sitting firmly on their chairs, stable, unmoved - and something within and outside us all, that was whipping by like leaves blown by a great wind. At the head of the table, Orion Black stood up and began to speak.

" 'I believe in a better world,' said Orion Black in a passionate voice, as if he were addressing a political rally. 'I believe in a world where merit is rewarded and decency respected; where tyranny is punished, and justice means rendering to each rank their dues. And I intend to fight for a better world - whatever sacrifices I have to make.' Nymphadora and I looked at each other with growing doubt. What did any of this have to do with an invitation to dinner? And where, for that matter, was the dinner?

" 'Politicians,' went on Orion, 'have a thousand ways to make the worse sound the better, flatter evil instincts, make black white and white black. We of the House of Black, however, have long held to one definite set of values, rejecting all claims of morality and all pretend truths from outside sources; knowing that what was true to us is what we should be true to, whatever the rest of the world thinks.

" 'And today we have invited to our home the hero who, in spite of continuous setbacks and slanders, will yet lead us to our glorious future - vindicate our values, and establish the rule of moral progress and the earnest improvement of society. My lords and ladies of the house of Black, let our leader and hero know that there is still one place where his name is in honour and his followers are true!' And I for one was horrified, because I was beginning to be sure where this was going. It was not Nymphadora who was the hero and leader they praised.

"You know, Ted, those nightmares where everything goes exactly the wrong way from what it should, and you are incapable of doing anything about it? That is what it was like. I felt those bodiless whippings and stirrings rise and rage - and suddenly, when I tried to rise from my chair, I found I could not. Something was holding me there... to see what I did not want to see, what my being was revolting against. I knew, somehow I knew, what was going to happen.

"And it happened. A house-elf, with a smirk on its face, came in holding high a large silver platter, on which Lord Voldemort's beheaded head rested in a thick pool of blood. And Orion and Walburga rose and saluted it; and I saw the head deliver a monstrous caricature of a benevolent grin to both.

" 'Your house-elf is dead, of course.' (Nymphadora's face twisted in pain and rage, and the air around her suddenly crackled with her effort to break out of the trap.) 'We sent all the Black house-elves with orders to capture the head of the Dark Lord for us, and she was silly enough to resist.' It was only then that I noticed that the grinning Elf who bore the head was covered in blood from top to toe. Walburga made an appalling little bow at the thing on the bloody platter. 'He is at the heart of the time-turning, He will remember it as the rest forget; and He will know what the house of Black has done for Him.' And the bodiless head nodded. The sense of things whipping and whizzing past was increasing; and I tried again to move, and again found that I could not.

" 'You should have been drowned at birth, Nymphadora,' said Walburga amiably. 'You were a wrong'un since you were born. My husband was right,' - another appalling little bow, this time to Orion - 'and I was wrong; and I allowed you to set us against each other when I should have joined him in using proper authority to teach you some sense. A rebel from birth, a wedge between wife and husband, a seducer for your younger brothers' - here she gave Sirius a contemptuous glance - 'and in the end the enemy of the party of honest wizards and the murderer of all our hopes. Oh, but it is not too late to undo all the evil I've done...

" 'There is no modern term for the spell we performed, but you may call it Retroactive Abortion. My Lord helped us perfect our knowledge of it' (another bow; another monstrous imitation of a smile; and I had this ghastly vision of that bodiless head whispering in the ears of Walburga and Orion like a snake) 'but it can only be performed by a mother or a father - or both.

" 'It is the only known spell that can alter time to its roots. It undoes a child who has earned the wrath of a parent. As the child is unmade, Time reforms itself in a better shape; the shape it would have had if you had not come along to pervert it.'

"And I finally understood, Ted... I understood what it was that I had felt being torn and driven like a wind around me... and I saw the horror and astonishment on Nymphadora's face, knew that she knew it too. It was time; time, from which her presence and all its effects were being erased. 'Like my husband,' went on Walburga in a damnably cheerful way, 'I believe in a better world. Today we strike a blow for it.' I heard a ripple of polite applause from nearly all the assembled Blacks, and, for the first but not last time that day, I felt like throwing up.

"...and I was thinking, Ted, I was thinking, my God, this is a mother, this is her mother... and my mother is there approving and supporting her...

"...and I saw Voldemort's head vanish from the platter...

"...and I thought of my sisters. I looked at them and I was... I could not believe what I was seeing. Or rather, I could, but refused to.

"It was as if neither of them had any sense that this put them both in doubt, put the root of their being in doubt. With Bellatrix, at least, one could see where it came from: what I saw - the fixed joyful glare, the slightly parted lips, the silently heaving chest and air of intense excitement - was the conclusion that a very pessimistic forecast would have reached. She loved the thought, or rather the sense, of her cousin being destroyed, wiped from reality with all her works; she loved it with an orgasmic intensity, with a misguided sensual heat. I had seen her grow into this Fury, never accepting the truth or depth of what I had seen, always hoping that she could be shaken out of her deadly path, brought back to sense - while I have to ask, now, whether there ever was any sense to bring her back to. But at least I knew enough to tell the passions that shook her. That I had deluded myself about her was my own fault, not hers; and at any rate, who would want to think such things of her own sister?

"It was Cissy, lovely little Cissy, who broke my heart. A child of fourteen should not have had that calm, matter-of-fact, approving gaze, as the horror unfolded; she should not have nodded politely as her aunt savaged her own daughter's politics and declared that she never ought to have been made and would now be unmade. And when I looked at her and let my grief and horror be seen in my eyes, she merely raised one eyebrow - I said, Ted, I just said how ugly the face of treachery is - but that was something worse. The same and worse. It was a beautiful, apparently innocent face, consenting to evil, treating limitless evil and present cruelty like a sane, sensible, ordinary notion; looking at me with a certain polite bewilderment because I showed that I could not live with it. And then her eyes grew visibly colder, distant, and actually careless, as if she had not only rejected me, but lost interest in anything I might have to say or feel. Without saying a word, I had lost both my sisters.

"The end had begun. Struggling against the powers of collapsing time and rewritten fate, Nymphadora managed to rise to her feet; the unleashed magic exploded around her, shattering the chair she had been sitting on, and knocking young Regulus, who was sitting next to her, flat. He fainted, and I am pretty sure he saw nothing else of what happened. And Nymphadora rose to her feet - where nobody should have been able to. I tell you, if any witch could possibly have undone her parents' spell, alone, it would have been her. But even as she staggered up, we could see the insignia and ring of the Minister vanish from her. Two years of patient struggle against evil had been undone in a matter of minutes. Her face was already looking younger; even as bitter tears creased its surface, I saw some lines made by time begin to vanish..

"I heard a crackle come from my left, and I saw that time was shimmering and protesting around old Uncle Alphard. And another such noise came from near Nymphadora; and I saw that Sirius, too, was struggling like a demon to try and do something, anything. And now I myself poured every ounce of magic I had into the effort, and the air grew thick around my chair. The rest of the assembled Blacks looked at us with calculating stares, as, one by one, we collapsed. The unmaking of Nymphadora lasted over two hours; and in all this time, the only move I could manage was to force both my hands over my mouth, to stop myself vomiting.

"Something started happening to Orion and Walburga, too. They were straighter, stronger - something like - almost unnaturally flushed. My first impression was that I must always have underrated my aunt and uncle, they looked so impressive now. I even had a crazy flitting thought that no wonder Nymphadora was their daughter... I thought I could recognize the stance, the authority.

"But that was wrong, all wrong. I looked at Nymphadora, and I saw that she was - smaller. Her clothes no longer fitted her; they hung loose around her slender limbs. While her parents seemed to have acquired that presence, that authority, that air of justice and doom - while they even looked younger and more handsome - she no longer had it. She was still railing at them, fighting, trying to resist; but clumsily, tearfully, like an angry teen-ager. And her mother... how shall I explain what she was like? Wait, I've got it. Ted, you remember the movie you took me to? The one with the seven funny dwarves and the animals? Well, she was exactly like the evil queen. Taller than a woman should be, cruel, and killingly beautiful. A vampire queen may look like that, I guess.

"I could not bear to look, and I could not bear to look away. And when I looked away, I could only look at Sirius. And this was his sister who was being destroyed by her parents in front of his own eyes. I cannot describe what I saw in his face, Ted, but I can say that it does not belong in the face of a boy of sixteen.

"They were so alike, Dora and Sirius: tall and lean and beautiful with those incredible blue eyes, that could flash as fearfully as lighting or look at you so tenderly that you felt that you were the only thing that mattered in the world. And Sirius had always thought the world of his sister, modelled himself after her, defended her before their parents, and finally gone to war with her when he was not even of age. He had left behind his friends, James Potter, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew - for the first and last time; because he had to be by her side in danger. I felt like I was being killed and destroyed and crushed into the mud then and there; Sirius, then - what could possibly have Sirius felt, when he was so much closer to her than I was?

"And the agony and degradation went on. After a while, I lost even the ability to retch. There was the moment when Dora was reduced to a small girl of eight, seven, six - no longer protesting, just crying her eyes out. I had this irresistible need to hold her and cradle her, anyone would have; and I thought, surely they must have had enough, surely they will stop now - surely they cannot look at their own little girl and want to see her destroyed. But as Nymphadora grew younger and younger, so Walburga's smile grew wider and brighter.

"Finally there was nothing but a baby, quite naked, crawling out of the adult Nymphadora's robes as they sprawled on the ground. The crying had ceased; the poor little creature no longer realized even the rudiments of what was being done to her, and I watched her crawl towards her mother and stretch her little arms and smile at her. Her mother was still smiling - the child thought... Gods above and below! Then she released some poo - nobody had thought of a nappy, of course.

"She, and we with her, were to be spared nothing. She still shrank, till she could no longer crawl. She flipped herself on her back one last time, and lay there with a giggle on her face. And then retreating time devoured her last few months, and there was no visible difference between her and any new-born child; and she started coughing pathetically, and suddenly was dead, for she could not have survived outside a mother's womb. We saw the breath rattle and cease, the blood rush to her face - the tiny, but unmistakeable collapse. And still the shrinking continued, till it was hard to see anything - till nothing was there, except for that pitiful little brown stain of kiddie poo, to prove that a human being had once existed.

"Then the pressure of crumbling and restarting time on us was finally over, and we could move. And before I even had time to think, Sirius had risen, and, in three tiger strides, had reached his mother, seizing her by the front of her robes.

"(And I noticed that, even in his rage, he had carefully avoided the little poo stain; and I could not help crying.)

"That was no longer even the dashing teen-ager who had gone to war with Nymphadora the previous morning; what stood there before her, his eyes burning like fire, his lips drawn back as if he were about to rip her throat out with his teeth, was at once a man, an adult, and the most terrible beast of prey I have ever seen. I have never seen a werewolf in its rage, and I hope never to, but I cannot imagine that the most rabid of them could inflict more sheer terror than Sirius Black when he confronted his mother. Orion tried to seize him, and Sirius literally swatted him with the back of his arm; and Orion fell to the ground and did not move.

"For a second, it was as though two monsters stood there, about to rip each other to pieces. Then Sirius let her go. He never told me why he did so, and I do not intend to ask him. It may be that he did not want to make himself as bad as her, not to commit the sin of kin-slaying; or, to the contrary, that he had rejected her so totally that he no longer even wanted the taste of her blood - even that would be too close to something he no longer wanted to have anything to do with. But I think that, coming so close to her, he must have perceived the beginnings of the last change; and perhaps some instinct told him that she would soon be punished as atrociously, and perhaps more, than any power of his could do to her.

"He did not immediately leave, but kept staring straight in her eyes as she stared back. He said in a soft, deadly snarl, that we all could hear: 'You miserable, bloodthirsty, deluded hag - I reject you. You and your whole breed of freaks. You are the gate of Hell and death and only sick filth can ever want to have anything to do with you. I am not your son - the very idea disgusts me. I would rather die than have anything to do with you again. Come on,' he concluded with a look of utter contempt, 'aren't you going to play that little game with me as well? Or is it that it cannot be done when the victim knows of it? Or when he has rejected you already?'

"Her answer began in the same tone: 'You? You think I would waste any power or spells on you? The house of Black has nothing to fear from you except disgrace. Without her, you are nothing. You can do nothing alone, and you know it. You will live in delusion; your friends will deceive and betray you; you will die having accomplished nothing, feared, hated and despised by the whole wizarding world; and you will never have a grave...'

"As she went on, however, her voice rose and rose. And as her curses filled the air, it became clear to everyone that the dreadful spell had not done its final work yet. The first thing I noticed was that she no longer quite seemed to know what she was saying; her words were slowly degenerating into a screamed repetition of abuse. And she was no longer looking down on her son, but straight into his eyes - and then up. Then folds of skin started falling from her neck, while the skin on her hands dried and stretched tight over sinew and bones. It seemed to take only minutes for the evil queen to age by decades - horribly, obscenely recognizable, but with no trace of beauty, till nothing was left but a howling hag.

" 'YOU BLOOD TRAITOR, YOU SHAME OF MY FLESH, YOU BLOOD TRAITOR...' The screams came over each other, repeating themselves, out of control. 'I no longer am any of those things,' said Sirius with an ice-cold smile of hate, his words somehow cutting through the noise. 'I am no longer your son - the only good thing about this horror.' Walburga kept on screeching, as if she had not heard him; as if she could no longer control or stop herself; and he dropped her and left her to wither in plain sight of everyone.

"Orion, too, was slowly falling in on himself. When I looked at him, I could not have recognized him: twisted by arthritis, with yellowing blotchy skin covered with coarse hair, his head hanging down as though its neck could no longer support it, dirty gray hair in a coarse crown, rheumy filmy eyes from which a constant discharge fell - as though he were weeping; but a cruel, vindictive fold to his mouth, grinning with a few mildewed canines on view, overshadowed by a thin long skeletal beak of a nose. Everything ugly, repulsive and unlovable about old age and the approach of death was stamped on that awful mask; and yet, worst of all, was a kind of snarling satisfaction in destruction, an instinctive malignancy left where any trace of mind was evidently gone.

"For a second I took them both in. The question formed itself in me, not even as if I were speaking it, but as if it rose from the air: Was it worth it, Orion and Walburga? Was it worth the revenge, was it worth the Dark Lord whispering in your brain, was it worth your own destruction? But in one and the same second, I saw the satisfied vicious grin stamped on Orion's mindless husk, and knew that it was a question to no purpose.

"The other Blacks had taken longer than us to realize what the spell had been doing to Walburga and Orion; and I should think that was what saved Sirius, Alphard and me. While their eyes were fixed on the ghastly decay of the spellcasters, we rose and left, and nobody did anything - not even Bellatrix. I was terrified that she might decide to kill us on the spot, and - I'm sorry to say this - but when Sirius made a move to pick up Regulus, who was still lying sprawled on the floor, it was I who dragged him away.

"Whether Walburga lasted for years in that collapsed haglike form, or whether she died the night that I and Alphard and Sirius turned our backs on her and on that cancer that called itself our family, I do not know. In my dreams, in my nightmares, she keeps collapsing until there is nothing else but a flat surface - until all depth is gone, and all is left is a flat picture, a portrait, with two staring eyes and an open, drooling, screaming mouth. Sirius recently told me that such a portrait does indeed hang in the hallway where I last saw my aunt.

"The way I recall it is that we left as if demons were after us. I honestly kept turning towards the house as I fled, imagining that something huge and horrible would come drooling down the front steps and pursue us. And I imagined, at first, that we would be fleeing into the night... for some reason, I thought it must be moonless dark outside. But in the outside world, only two hours - two and a half, maybe - had passed; it was early afternoon, and the sun was shining in the sky.

"We stood in a Muggle street - just stood there, looking at each other, taking in what had happened. Alphard looked across to the Black mansion, still standing insolently over all the little Muggle buildings on either side, and shook his head heavily. 'They will wither and die,' he said, 'and their wealth, I think, will pass to strangers and enemies. They have destroyed the best within themselves, and there is nothing but corruption left in them. Within a generation, there will be no wizard left to bear the name of Black.' Then he fell into a deep brooding silence, from which our questions could not shake him.

"Eventually he said: 'You two don't have to worry about how you will live. I do have a bit of my own, you know; it is open to you while I am alive, and yours after I die. Which I hope and believe will not be long - after this day, I have little pleasure left in this world. I will alter my will before the sun sets.' And he disapparated, not giving Sirius or me the chance to even say thanks.

"I don't even remember Sirius going, because at that point memories had begun to break in on me - memories I had never had before, of things I had never heard. I remembered Claudine Bulstrode being repeatedly punished and eventually expelled from Hogwarts, because of Dawn Heaton's schemes; and I remembered, a couple of years later, Dawn and Maria Lypny and their whole families being found tortured to death, with the Dark Mark floating above their destroyed homes, because Claudine had joined the Death Eaters. I remembered Death Eaters swaggering through Knockturn Alley as if they owned the place, and Abraxas Malfoy being heard with respect in the Wizangemot. I remembered James Defreeze committing suicide on the front steps of the Ministry in protest at their spineless policy, making sure that his dying blood spattered Ministers Sewardston and Bagnold. I remembered all the things that were corrupted, and all the people who suffered and were killed or inwardly broken, because of all sorts of opportunities provided by the lack of a single woman.

"As far as I was concerned, the last blow had been struck. The backbone of a lifetime of indoctrination and discipline was well and truly broken. I loved you, Ted, make no mistake; but the very things that had fought that love in me, the loyalties and beliefs bred in me from the cradle, were now a further reason to search you out. I wanted away from my family, from everything they stood for - and on the other side there were you, gentle and handsome and thoughtful. Who could have hesitated for a second?

"I later found out... found out? The whole wizarding world found out, Ted - it was a nine days' wonder - that on the same evening I came to look for you, Sirius had walked straight to the home of his friend James Potter and asked for a kind of asylum. Me, I was of age, and it was nobody's business where I went to live or who I lived with; but Sirius was still only sixteen, and his family had a right to demand him back. Hogwarts, the Ministry, everybody was horrified... things grew somewhat easier when word came back from his parents that they would not have him back as a gift, that they had one true son and that that was enough. So the Potters, who are nice people, officially took over daily guardianship for Sirius - one step below actual adoption. Sirius was eager to be officially adopted and lose his Black identity for good, but old Mr.Potter's sense of propriety would not hear of it, and of course he could have no idea of what had really taken place between Sirius and his blood kin. So his bond with his family was never legally broken, and his name is Black to this day.

"My love, I will never regret meeting you - but who knows if I would have found the courage to accept my own feelings, let alone search you out, if Nymphadora had not been destroyed? And that is the least that my wretched family did. They handed the whole wizarding world back to a darkness shot with blood. I can no longer deceive myself now: they did so because they like it. They like violence and pain.

"People do not realize how near catastrophe and tyranny we are. Only Dumbledore now stands between us and complete collapse, really. And I have noticed that, for some reason, Dumbledore just hates to take a public stand or a position of leadership. He is the exact opposite of Nymphadora in this. He has some sort of inhibition - possibly to do with personal history, I don't know - but he had to be forced to fight Grindelwald. Forced, I mean, not by the rest of wizardkind, but by Grindelwald's own excesses. What is more, Dumbledore has forgotten Nymphadora, like the rest of wizardkind, and for the same reason. He is powerful, but not above time. So, if she ever provided any kind of model for a good Minister for Magic, it now no longer exists. And Dumbledore is much older now, and more obstinate, than he ever was at the time of Grindelwald. He absolutely refuses to be Minister for Magic - and Voldemort grows stronger. If Dumbledore ever dies, Ted, people like us will do well to take a lot of very long journeys.

"This is the story, Ted my love. I married you and bear your child because my cousin Nymphadora, the finest human being I ever knew, was destroyed by her own family. And there still are a few people alive now who remember it. So it is not only that Nymphadora was the finest human being I have ever met: it is also that I want them all to know that I, for one, have forgotten nothing. I want them to know that our family stands, now, for what Nymphadora stood for then, and against what she opposed. And above all, I have to show that something of the light that Nymphadora Black shed still shines. I do not believe that anyone, even this beloved child, will be able to do as much; but you and I, Ted, will bring her up a decent human being, and maybe one day she too will strike a blow against this darkness. Or she will not - but she will be a good person anyway, like the cousin she will never know."

END OF THE STORY