The Last of the Blacks

Chapter 38: Plans And Leadership

Andromeda Tonks was cooking in the kitchen in 12 Grimmauld Place even though Cassiopea didn't even bother to look at the food her aunt was making, when the divorce papers came. She stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath.

When she had escaped her family for Ted she didn't expect that one day he might want to leave her and their daughter. Safety, he said.

There was no safety in the world. There was no being OK or feeling wanted. It was all going to be taken away sooner or later and everyone you love would be taken away from you.

Sirius.

Andromeda stopped cooking. She stopped everything she was doing because of that name.

Sirius, her younger cousin, was dead. He wasn't going to come home anymore. He wasn't going to laugh or smile or make a joke about Cassie's Christmas socks. He wasn't going to hug her or make cakes with her.

Andromeda hated the fact that Sirius died before she could even say sorry, before she could even say that she always loved him - even when he was in Azkaban, before she could tell him that she had forgiven him about the plan to catch Pettigrew long before he got out of that train.

And yet she was right. She remembered those stupid, stupid words. 'And then you'll leave again for some reason and I again I will have to break her little heart by telling her you are not coming home.' How could an Expelliarmus kill him? How could he die from such a dumb spell?

When Dora told her what had happened in the Ministry, Andromeda didn't believe. She said that Sirius was coming home. Because Cassie needed him. Now more than ever.

Yet he didn't come back.

She wanted to know that he had faked his death and he was coming back. Yet a month passed and he didn't.

Kreacher came into the kitchen with the food which he had left for Cassie the night before. She hadn't eaten.

Again.

"The Mistress doesn't want to talk," the house elf said. "What should Kreacher do now, mistress Andromeda?"

"Is she still in Sirius' room?" the name burnt her throat.

"Yes, mistress. She is hugging the book which the master made with her with photos of them."

Andromeda nodded.

A month. For a month she was trying to make Cassiopea talk, to come out of that room to do something that wasn't going to the bathroom, to eat, to live. But the girl had lost her will the moment her father's body disappeared.

When Remus finally came, he insisted to talk to Cassiopea about her behavior, to make her say sorry to Harry Potter, to tell him that she was wrong to hit him and to say sorry that she didn't come to the funeral.

"What funeral?" Andromeda had asked.

"Sirius'," Remus had said. "She had to come, Andromeda. You had to come."

"You didn't tell me there was a funeral."

Remus had left minutes later.

Andromeda still didn't know how to tell Cassie that there was a funeral and no one had invited her. For the first time Andy considered joining the Dark Lord. Only to destroy them for Cassie's sake, of course.

But she never did.

She wrote to Dumbledore, telling him what an ass he was. She wrote to Snape, begging him for help. To Narcissa to come to Grimmauld Place sometime with Kol, Daphne and Draco.

Dumbledore said that Harry wasn't the one to blame about Sirius Black's death and for him was better that Cassiopea was staying home. Snape said that he was going to help her somehow, that he was going to find a way to make her live again. And Narcissa said that she was going to come as soon as the children returned from school and finish some work.