After the Ball

Andromeda

After the ball is over,

After the break of morn,

After the dancers' leaving

After the stars are gone;

Many a heart is aching

If you could read them all

Many a hope that has vanished

After the ball.

On the whole, Andromeda reflected, lounging at the side of the ballroom with a glass of champagne, she had not enjoyed the Notts' wedding as much as she ought. It did not make it better that it was almost entirely her own fault. It was stupid to have sulked when her mother told her that Ted could not be invited to form one their party. Of course he couldn't. It would have been one thing had Andromeda been there in her own right, she thought later, and prepared to take the consequences of causing hideous embarrassment to her hosts, but she had not been there in her own right, she was a daughter only, and Ted would not have been able to accompany them had he been the scion of purest of pureblood wizardry, and not as he put it, a fully paid-up and dotted-line-signed member of the Mudblood bourgeoisie. Then to have sulked, not because her mother had refused to back down, but because nothing had been offered to make up for disappointment, was the most babyish thing in the word. Years later and infinitely wiser, Andromeda was thoroughly ashamed of herself. Not that it mattered much about her, save that had she had a better time, disaster might have been averted. Had she not spent much of the evening talking to Arthur Weasley, fun to start with, but rather palling when she realized that for all his years of work with Muggle artefacts his interest in the subjects remained at the level of novelty value and a male fixation with gadgets, than any developed interest in the complexities of everyday Muggle life. Had she spent even a little time with her sisters. Had she opened her eyes.

Andromeda took no credit for her sisters' choices, but she couldn't help but reflect that had someone other than Lucius Malfoy realized that Bella had received such a compelling offer that night, they might all have been better off. Nor did Andromeda blame Lucius. He was a Death Eater, and no doubt he had spoken for the recruitment of Bellatrix, but Andromeda strongly suspected that had he known the Dark Lord intended to make his a personal approach in quite that way and with quite that offer of apprenticeship, he would have been considerably less enthusiastic. She had no doubt that Lucius knew every trick in the book, plus more than a few he'd pencilled in the margins, but if there was one thing Lucius he specialised in it was turning things to his advantage and Bellatrix's rise had not been that. She tried not to think the worrying thought that in the very long term, the still playing-out long term, perhaps he had.

Andromeda sipped at her champagne and scanned the room. It was getting late and the dancers had thinned out a little when she noticed the flash of Bellatrix's dark hair and something bright in her hand. Across the crowd of heads Andromeda watched as her sister passed the remains of a drinks table, halting suddenly and staggering as she turned abruptly away from the room. Drunk? Surely not, this was Bellatrix, not some lairy Hufflepuff. If she didn't move in a moment, Andromeda would go over, but her view was blocked by Evan Rosier revelling with Tamar Waldegrave, plainly unable to believe his luck, and by the time it cleared Bella had been joined by Lucius and Narcissa, and a fourth body would just make them conspicuous, for which Bella would certainly not be grateful. Between the swirl of dress robes, Andormeda caught a glimpse of red splashed across the table linen. Not wine, but blood. Had Bella hurt herself? She was never usually clumsy or even merely careless. Andromeda frowned; Bellatrix had been rather peculiar today. She didn't much like these occasions; too young to be counted among the adults, too old to have fun with the children, and too inept to work out a satisfactory place in the middle. Still she looked fantastic, which was itself surprisingly galling to Andromeda, used to being the very Blackest of the Blacks, and perhaps all the more so for the way Bella had pulled it off, or rather kept it on. Honestly, the stupidity of grown-ups would never cease to amaze her - nor would awareness of this general predilection subsequently prevent her making some pretty dim moves herself - but one would have thought their mother would have known that there was no way on God's green earth that after all those lengthy arguments Bella would have genuinely caved and agreed to wear her mother's favoured dress robe pattern to the wedding. Especially not when Mum's main argument in favour had been what a grown-up young witch it made her look. That neckline and that low back were never going to fly with Bellatrix, who after six and a half years at Hogwarts still dressed standing on her four-poster with the curtains drawn. Andromeda looked over towards her sisters again. That had been blood on the table, but now it wasn't there and as Lucius leaned over Bellatrix, speaking urgently, Narcissa's back was shielding the three of them from the room in so determined a manner that something absolutely and positively had to be up.

She was dancing with Narcissa, the evening having definitely reached the everyone for herself stage of choreography. A fair number of older couples kept up standards in the centre of the floor, including Uncle Alphard dancing with Gizelda Marchbanks, but the youth of the day had reached the stage when up-past-bedtime crashed into excessive quantities of ices, fancies and petits fours and possibly an ill-advised quantity of alcohol. Bellatrix, whom Andromeda had been amazed to see dancing - with an expression of fierce concentration on her face, but not visibly counting the steps - successively with Avery and Rodolphus Lestrange, had vanished again, but then Bella tended to do that at parties. Besides, Narcissa had explained how she had cut herself, and her arm was probably hurting.

'Do you think Bellatrix will be Head Girl next year?' Narcissa asked suddenly. Andromeda shrugged.

'Got to be. Who else is there?'

'I know, I just I wondered about Dumbledore.'

'Yes, but could he really justify to the governors passing over Bellatrix for someone like Sophronisba Hallow?' said Andromeda. 'Crux Croaker'd be all right, but no one's going to let her do it.'

'It could be Wilkes.'

'Ye-es, but if it's going to be Wilkes, it might as well be Bella. I mean, objectively, why not? She's talented, disciplined, respected, she was a good prefect in her fifth year, not over-sporty, so won't spend all the time playing Quidditch when she ought to be HG-ing. It's simply got to be her.'

'True,' Narcissa said, 'but I don't think that'll swing it. If she is, it'll be because of there's something else.'

'What?'

'Well, if he picks Bella, he doesn't have to have one of us. '

That was true, Andromeda thought, and that might well swing it indeed. It would seem odd for Dumbledore not to have any of the Black girls as Head. Narcissa might be most easily disposed of out of concern for her health, but Andromeda, who had a perfect record of virtue, health and talent, would be hard to ignore and, given a mutual distaste, almost impossible for the Headmaster to work with. Bellatrix solved that problem quite neatly. As for having a Head with a certain aptitude for the Dark Arts, that was certainly not without precedent. Andromeda did not believe that Tom Riddle's Independent Study: Dark Arts N.E.W.T. had been nearly as benign as his dissertation title, "Wickedness Is Always Wickedness" Cultural Attitudes to the Arcane Arts: a European Comparison, might lead the unsuspecting to suppose. Nonetheless, Andromeda could not believe that Dumbledore's imminent discovery of her own N.E.W.T ambitions could do anything less than boost Bella's chances. A Head Girl with a natural bent towards certain magic was one thing, and one, now Narcissa had suggested it to her, which Andromeda saw Dumbledore would certainly take if only to provide a cast-iron excuse to avoid a Head Girl whose research into the effect of the Cruciatus Curse on the learning abilities of rats Andromeda very much intended to make the Natural Philosophy pages of the Daily Prophet.

'Twenty minutes, girls,' their mother had said, 'and see if you can find Bella. She's simply vanished.' The room was clearing, the happy couple long since departed, the dancing turned to talk.

'Hello again, Narcissa. Good evening, Andromeda, I haven't seen you yet today. Have you had a good time?'

'Yes, thank you.' Philip Malfoy, tall, leonine and really rather astonishingly pale, smiled down at them.

'I must say the Notts have done themselves proud. I even got in dance with Madam Patil, which is certainly not an opportunity on which a man should pass. But it's late, the room clears, and I am in search of my wandering offspring. I've managed a daughter, but the son eludes me. You've no idea where Lucius is, I suppose?'

Andromeda shook her head. 'Sorry, I haven't seen him since earlier. The last time I looked, he was with Bellatrix.'

'Alas, your sister has already declared her ignorance. Narcissa?'

'Have you tried the card room? He and Rodolphus Lestrange said they wanted a game.'

'Lucius plays cards these days? He must have picked that one up from his mother; I thought he stuck to blazes. Thank you my dears. If we don't see you to say goodbye, au revoir.' He walked off purposefully in the direction of the games room.

'Good God,' said Andromeda. 'Imagine being twenty and still collected from parties by one's father. No wonder he went to Austro-Hungary as soon as he finished Hogwarts. And Olympias Malfoy's twenty-six! Honestly, what's Mr Malfoy like?'

'Dying.'

'What?'

'He's dying,' Narcissa repeated. 'If he wants them to go home with him, it's probably because he needs their help. Olympias is a Healer, you know -'

'So she is, strange creature.'

' - but if they're going by carriage they'll need Lucius to drive.'

'Oh. But I'd no idea. How do you know?'

'Lucius told me.'

'Ah.' Andromeda decided that the question of just when Narcissa had been having intimate little chats with Lucius Malfoy would have to wait. 'What's wrong with him? He's awfully young to be that ill, unless it's a family thing. Didn't Lucius's grandfather die awfully young?'

'Yes, but that was in the war; he was killed by Grindelwald. Mr Malfoy's got a cancer of the blood. The Healers have tried, but they can't really do anything. He might live another four years, but that's about it.'

'Poor man.'

'It is. He's awfully nice, you know. Do you remember when we all went on holiday that summer?'

And so on, into reminiscence, and Bellatrix, who had not vanished, but had merely been playing tig in the topiary garden with Sirius and his friends, wandered over followed in a moment by their mother, and because Andromeda clearly couldn't say anything in front of their mother, and when she did catch a glimpse of Bella's arm there was only a thin red line - quite a shallow cut after all, it seemed - she never did ask what had happened. Instead she sat and brooded over the Malfoys, Johanna, whom she had liked tremendously when they were little before she moved to Vienna, Philip, who was dying, remote and irreproachable Olympias with her mother's yellow hair, and Lucius. She wondered whether she ought to talk to her parents about Lucius, but decided against it. Narcissa wasn't stupid and nor was he, and besides, Bellatrix had almost certainly already done so. Oh you foolish, foolish girl, she thought, years later, looking at Bellatrix's gaunt and bitter face on the front page of the newspaper. How did you not see? That night, it was that night! The three of you; you, Lucius and Narcissa, how did none of you see? How did it come to this?

Oh, but it had been easy enough. There was Narcissa, shocked at the sight of blood and too accepting of reassurance. Lucius, knowing something had happened and assuming something else. Two years out of Hogwarts, most of that time spent on the continent, he hadn't seen how Bellatrix had grown up. Andromeda herself, idiotically concerned more with the morals of a younger sister than with the soul of the elder. So it had been that night, out in the garden, in the shades below the lighted terrace, that Bella had gone out and Voldemort had found her. That night, safe under the eyes of so many witches and wizards her sister had been lost. Andromeda wasn't naïve. She knew that in those days many magical people had favoured Voldemort's views, and she understood why. Her own parents had had a good deal of sympathy for them; Sirius's even more so. Only her aunt and uncle had been squeamish about method. Her own parents had dropped their enthusiasm fairly early, in protest at the party's political naivety. Lucius was another type; in it for his own reasons and Narcissa the same. They would survive whatever happened. Only Bellatrix and Sirius, the passionate ones, had fallen when the Dark Lord failed, doomed by their own desires. Only she might have stopped them, stopped Bella that night, had she only looked about her and seen her world rushing to its doom.

'Mother?'

Nymphadora, clattering into the hall, had arrived for a family evening at the Muggle theatre, tickets through some friends of Ted, which meant they had to drive and give offer lifts home, Sorry we can't, we're apparating, not being a usable excuse.

'Hello, dear.' Her daughter draped her coat over a chair and came to be kissed. 'You do look nice.' She did, in a dark red woollen dress, black hair long and loose. 'But you're looking tired. I know what the Ministry's like; you keep an eye on that overtime.'

'Oh honestly, Mum! I can look after myself.' A year ago, it would have been a grizzle about the department, but not any longer. No, it wasn't the Ministry keeping Nymphadora up late.

'That's what we all think. But I've seen too many of our family go down because they knew they were right.'

'As if you don't think you are!' Nymphadora smiled.

'Yes, I do. But at least I think.' Andromeda picked up her handbag and began the ritual hunt for the car keys. 'Give your father a yell; we need to get moving.'

Footsteps on the stairs, Nymphadora running up, calling for Ted. Then two sets of footsteps coming down.

'Ready?' Ted shrugged himself into his overcoat. 'And off.'

In the car, the Archers closing theme faded as he looked at Nymphadora in the rear-view mirror.

'You're looking tired, my girl.'

'For goodness' sake, Dad! Did Mum tell you to say that?'

'She didn't need to. I shan't say anything else. Just take care of yourself.'

'I will. We've just been busy at - at work.' She hesitated. 'Mum, you've never said - do you believe that You-Know-who is back?'

'No.' Behind her, Andromeda could have sworn she felt her daughter stiffen in shock. 'I never believed he went away. And speaking of Lord Voldemort and work-related activities,' she continued, wondering what Nymphadora would say if she called him Tom Riddle - probably nothing, she probably hadn't a clue - 'have you thought what you'll say when he asks you?'

'Asks me what?'

'To join him, what else?' Beside her, Ted kept his eyes resolutely on the road.

'Why would he, Mother? I'm not a pureblood.'

'You're a Black and a metamorphmagus and your father's a talented wizard, and he's not a fool, whatever his followers may be. He will ask, and you had better have an answer. You won't stand against him without one. You had better know why you think you're right, because he'll know if you're lying and Dumbledore won't do for a reason there.'

'Did he ever ask you?'

'Of course.' Beside the road, the sodium lamps glowed, painting Andromeda's skin greenish-white where she had taken off her glove. 'Yes, of course.'

'What did you say?'

'I told him the truth.' Ted beside her, threading the wheel through his hands as they rounded the corner, the shift of his ankle as he pressed down the clutch and moved up to fifth gear, Nymphadora reflected in the mirror, her eyes huge in her heart-shaped face. 'If he really wanted me, he should have picked me first.'