L'Histoire Noire

L'Histoire Noire

Part Two: Innocent yet Shamed

No, it is not I, it is somebody else who is suffering.

I would not have been able to bear what happened,

Let them shroud it in black,

And let them carry off the lanterns...

Night.

-from "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova

It happened during the history section of Auror training.

They were taught, along with laws and their origin, about notable events in recent wizarding history that had some influence over current problems. Nymphadora Tonks had felt the first twinges of apprehension and dread when they began the lessons concerning the Death Eaters. Their instructor, a wizened old wizard who clearly had been retired during You-Know-Who's first reign, told them histories of arrests and issues faced by Aurors during the tumultuous time.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat as Sirius Black was mentioned almost immediately.

"Unthinkable crime," said one of her fellow trainees. There were five of them total, and she was the youngest, the only one fresh out of Hogwarts. The oldest was maybe ten years older than she, and the other three fell somewhere in between. Three men, two women and she was the only one with a special talent. She was also the only one with a shadowed heritage.

"Despicable," agreed another.

Tonks remained silent. The instructor outlined Sirius's crimes and subsequent punishment while disgust and fear emanated from her fellow trainees. She refused to add proclamations of disgust and horror to the collection.

Tonks's mother was a Black. Andromeda Tonks, with her long, lovely black hair and her shining, happy and only thinly shadowed grey eyes, was born of the same family as Sirius Black, the horrifying murderer.

The lecture turned away from Sirius Black and onto the dangers facing Aurors, with special focus on the fates of Frank and Alice Longbottom. "Tortured to the point of insanity," said the wizard. "To this day they're just empty voids."

The Lestranges and a Crouch were responsible, and again her fellow trainees expressed their horror and shock at the way that the Death Eaters had committed such atrocities. Tonks again remained silent. She could not force any words out of her throat expressing shock when she had already known what had transpired, and who had done the deed.

*

As a child Tonks had not given much thought to family. She had a mother and a father, a grandmother and a grandfather. That was all she needed.

She knew intellectually that her mother had parents, and perhaps other relatives, but she never bothered with asking. She didn't know them, so they were unimportant.

Names swirled throughout her parent's conversations that she did not recognize. The names were as exotic on the tongue as her own, and she wondered if she would hate Nymphadora as much if she were surrounded with others as strange and convoluted and unusual. Her mother's name is Andromeda, but to her it is truly Mum and does not count.

She would listen as her parents spoke of these exotic people who she knew she was meant to be around. She was meant for a more cultured existence than living in a dull townhouse with her laughing father and her beautiful mother, her name said it all. Nymphadora was not meant for a mediocre existence. Nymphadora was more.

When the conversations mentioned murder and torture and slow death and all the storybook things that were so much more exciting than her everyday life of dolls and toys and magic, she would lean closer to the doorframe and listen intently, ignoring the way the hardwood floor dug into her bony knees. She wasn't supposed to hear these things, she knew, because her mother decided such unpleasant business was no business for a pleasant little girl. Occasionally, her father would begin to read something aloud from the newspaper, but her mother would snap irritably, "Not in front of Nymphadora!"

"But Mum," she would protest. "I wanna hear."

Her father would give her a sympathetic look, but he would always continue to read the paper in silence, or even fold it clumsily and concentrate fully on his breakfast.

The day after the day when everyone was ecstatic and threw parties in the street and fireworks in the air and she got to stay up late and eat pink-frosted cake, her father gasped after reading the morning headline and said in a shocked sort of voice, "Sirius was arrested!"

Tonks stared, wide-eyed and fascinated, as her mother dropped her teacup. Streaming hot liquid and angry broken white shards spilled across the floor and her mother stepped in it carelessly as she moved to the table and took the paper. "Oh, great Merlin," she whispered.

She remembered eavesdropping as the name Sirius was mentioned in laughing voices. More importantly, she remembered the rare visits from the man, all dark hair and pale eyes and rumbling motorcycle that flew through the air like a broom and practical jokes at the expense of everybody.

"Nymphadora, go to your room," her father said, and she did without arguing. She listlessly moved the furniture around the living room of her dollhouse before growing bored, so she went exploring under her bed and discovered a yo-yo. She yo-yoed while it shrieked and wailed and insulted her for not being able to always get it back to her hand until she threw it back under the bed, remembering why she had tossed it there in the first place. Finally, she had started to amuse herself by making funny faces (big noses and little ears and wildly colored hair and eyes and lips and tongue) at the mirror, which only told her in a bored tone that she was much prettier with her own nose, when her mother knocked at her door.

"Hi Mummy," she said nervously. Her mother had tear streaks down her cheeks, and she sat on her bed.

"Come sit next to me, dear."

Tonks allowed her features to melt into her real face, and obediently climbed onto the bed.

"You remember my cousin Sirius, right?" her mother began. Tonks nodded. "Well, he did something very bad and was sent to prison. That's why Mummy was upset this morning."

"What'd he do?" she asked.

"Something terrible," her mother said shortly. "Let's not speak of it again."

Tonks allowed the incident to slip away from her until the day her mother's face stared out at her from the front page of the newspaper. "Mummy!" she exclaimed, pointing. "It's you!"

Her mother stared at the paper, and said, "No, it isn't, darling."

"But," Tonks said, looking at the picture. She saw that the witch staring petulantly, proudly there wasn't quite her mother, but the resemblance was still startling. "Who is she then?"

"A bad witch," said her mother.

"But why does she look like you?" Tonks asked.

Her mother sighed. "Because she's related to me."

"Is she your cousin like Sirius?"

"This is my sister," her mother said, holding up and poking the smirking witch's picture so hard that it tore, leaving a ragged rip across the beautiful face, tearing through the mouth and cheek and leaving thel picture deformed. "Her name is Bellatrix Lestrange. She is going to Azkaban for a very long time because she did something very terrible."

Tonks stared at the picture, fascinated, until her mother picked up the paper, carefully folded it and strode out of the room.

After that, when she met together with other kids, she could always count on the whispered phrase, "I've got relatives in Azkaban," to make her the center of attention and the source of awe and envy from the other kids. Azkaban was infamous, and it did not matter that her memories of the convicts were fuzzy or nonexistent. The other young witches and wizards were amazed anyway.

She never let her mother hear her when she said this.

One of her strongest memories of meeting a member of her mother's family was a funeral. It was for a great-aunt that her mother had never cared for, but strands of blood, however weak, bind beyond like and dislike so her mother dressed her in navy robes and took her to a graveyard. There were only two others there, a beautiful blonde and a small boy.

Her mother froze when she saw who else was there, and Tonks had gone the extra few steps until she felt a tug at her arm and noticed that her mother had stopped. They approached the grave, and stood on the opposite side of the gaping hole. Tonks looked into the hole nervously then stared across the chasm at the two pale-haired strangers.

"Andromeda." The blonde's voice was as cold as the wind that playfully lifted the ends of all their hair, and the boy watched from her side with solemn eyes.

"Narcissa," her mother replied, and Tonks felt a jolt of excitement. The name Narcissa had come up in her parent's conversations, and Tonks had always thought that, since they both were in possession of cumbersome names starting with the letter N, they would get along fabulously.

Narcissa looked at her then in the same manner her mother looked at a filthy bathroom or the rare mouse that made it past the cat's hungry jaws. "Is that yours?"

Her mother was furious; she could tell by the sudden pain in her hand as the grip on her hand tightened.

"This is my daughter Nymphadora," said her mother.

She had been taught to politely greet new acquaintances, but she didn't now. Narcissa spared her a glance, and said mildly, "Not a very attractive child, is she?"

Tonks felt all her hopes that she would find a kindred spirit in this woman dissipate into nothingness. She accepted that she would be called a child. She wasn't quite Hogwarts age yet, after all. She was, however, a perfectly pretty girl, as her grandmother was fond of telling her. Definitely she was more lovely than the boy who had one hand clinging to his mother's robes, even without altering herself.

"Nymphadora is a beautiful girl," her mother said stiffly. "Is that your son?"

"This is Draco," said Narcissa. Another familiar unusual name, short though it was it was still too large a label for the small, shadowy pale boy.

"He favors Lucius," her mother said. "Though I can see the Black in him."

Narcissa looked down at her son objectively, then at the yawning hole between them and said, "Aunt Merope was fond of saying he resembled Regulus."

Her mother nodded, and was saved from further conversation as a few older witches and wizards arrived, and the funeral began. Tonks watched Draco as the funeral droned on. He looked as uncomfortable to be there as she was, and kept fidgeting. When the funeral ended, the casket was lowered and flowers tossed in the ground, her mother told her to wait for her on the path.

Tonks obeyed and watched as her mother approached Narcissa. She could tell the conversation was ugly, and while neither woman actually shouted, their voices raised sharp and loud on some words. Tonks flinched as Narcissa said something about a half-blood while pointing in her direction, and briefly wondered if her mother was going to slap Narcissa.

Her mother finally turned, and her words reached Tonks. "We're still sisters, Narcissa. Blood matters most in the end, as Mother used to say."

"You are not my sister," Narcissa called. "You haven't been for a long time."

As her mother lead her away towards the caretaker's hut to Floo home, she glanced back over her shoulder to see little Draco fall over a tombstone. Narcissa scooped him back to his feet, brushing off his dirty knees and hugging away his tears. Tonks could see Narcissa's resemblance to her mother then, in the concerned furrow of her eyebrows and the consoling tilt of her mouth.

"Do you have many more sisters?" she asked.

"No," said her mother as she knocked on the caretaker's door. "None."

Tonks didn't press the subject.

When she headed off to Hogwarts, she didn't realize or even consider that everyone would know what Sirius Black had done. It was in the stony walls that she learned those harsh lessons, a tale of betrayal and murder and insanity far beyond what she had gleaned from eavesdropped conversations in her home. She listened in silence as her dorm mates told stories of deaths and horror starring her laughing, handsome cousin. It fascinated her utterly.

She let her Metamorphmagi abilities be known as she changed her hair color and style once a week and her classmates were much more interested in her different noses than years-old murders and the war that everyone tried to forget.

She was over halfway done with her education at Hogwarts when her family connections were discovered. She had been spouting a pale green head of curls when a Pureblood with a green and silver tie had called her filth.

"What was that?" she had snapped angrily, brandishing her wand. Her friends had clustered around her protectively, knowing that she was prone to accident.

"You're filth," repeated the boy. "It's disgusting what your mother did."

"My mother?" said Tonks blankly.

"A good pureblood woman like her running off with Mudblood filth," sneered the boy. "Producing an abomination like you. To think," he said to his friends, "her mother's a Black."

Tonks had hexed him, then, earning herself detention but not caring.

That night, one girl had asked, "You're a Black?"

"My mother was," Tonks said warily.

"You're related to Sirius Black?" another girl said, eyes wide.

"Well, yeah, but all purebloods are related," said Tonks, repeating what she had always heard. "Half of the school's related to him too. Can't we drop it?"

They didn't bring it up again, but occasionally Tonks would see one of her friends casting her a thoughtful, measured look that she didn't like at all.

*

All of the other Auror trainees had different ideas of what the names and crimes meant. They all had been affected to different degrees. One wizard came from a family that had suffered losses, and another witch hadn't been affected at all. The wizard took a self-righteous stance, angrily spitting out how despicable the Death Eaters were. The witch agreed without fervor, simply acknowledging that the crimes were sickening and the punishments suiting.

Tonks felt it was more confusing than anything else. She was innocent of the taint of her mother's family - she didn't share their family name, had never made it onto their family tree and her interactions with them had been few and far between - but she still felt a wispy, irrevokable sense of shame over the crimes they had committed.

She was sure that no one else in the room knew of her blood ties. She knew that she was being unusually quiet. Normally she was as loud as everyone else, offering her opinions and cracking jokes to help make the hour pass faster.

"Miss Tonks," said the instructor. "You've been quiet."

Every eye in the room turned and stared at her.

"I don't have anything to say," Tonks replied. "What they did was horrible, and everyone else has been quite vocal on that point."

Everyone noticed the sharp edge in her voice, but none questioned her. Tonks slunk down low in her chair, sticking her quill in her mouth before remembering it was a real quill and not a sugar one. She hated the feeling of shame she irrationally had. She'd had little contact with most, but the memory of the pain hidden in her mother's eyes whenever her family was mentioned had far-reaching effects.

Her mother hadn't chosen her family, but they had shaped who she became. Tonks herself still knew that although the pure blood of the Black family was in her veins, it was mingled with her father's Muggle roots and that made her something to be reviled and scorned by people she shared ancestors with. Her birth was a sin against their very way of life, and her mother had given up the advantages of her birth in order to allow her this life.

In the blackness of the midnight hour when the darkest and most deeply hidden fears emerged, Tonks sometimes wondered if her mother would live out her life in the same way if given a choice. Worse, she sometimes imagined how her life would be if her father was one of the Pureblood men that had undoubtedly tried to court her mother instead of her sloppy, cheerful father.

In her daydreams Nymphadora did not hate her name. Nymphadora was a darling who did not stumble even in the most precariously balanced shoes, who glided down grand staircases into the arms of handsome and debonair wizards. Nymphadora's neck and wrists and fingers always glittered with expensive jewelry and her body wrapped in silks and rare furs and enchantments. This Nymphadora was not embarrassed to walk around in public with her body morphed into curvaceous and gorgeous shapes, the way Tonks only did when locked in the bathroom or her bedroom where only the mirror could laugh at her.

Tonks knew that these fantasies were nothing more than the makings of the cheap romance novels that graced the shelves of every middle aged witch she had ever met, but there was an undeniable appeal to them, and this appeal was what worried her. What if her mother fantasized about the same thing? What if Andromeda Tonks wanted nothing more than to return to the grandeur of her youth, before she gave everything instilled in her since birth up to marry a man whose socks always slightly stank, no matter how many refreshing spells were cast upon them?

In the light of day, the fears seemed ridiculous, but there was no avoiding midnight's logic.

The lecture continued on around her, but Tonks couldn't focus on it

Her mother's blood ran in her veins but it did nothing for her. She obscenely thought that she should be superior in some obscure way. The fact that she was connected to a family like the Blacks should mean something, but ultimately, it didn't matter. Her connection was tenuous, her memories few and her association nonexistent.

In the end, Nymphadora Tonks was not defined by her blood. Nymphadora Tonks could not be defined by her appearances. Nymphadora Tonks was only defined by her thoughts and actions, and she would have to make them matter. They were all she would ever have.