Andromeda Tonks (toujoursentache) wrote in somerealityrpg, @ 2019-11-08 01:23:00 |
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Andromeda was nervous. And guilty. Very much so. From talking to others and from just knowing her cousin, she was fairly convinced he hadn’t killed those muggles, or Pettigrew. But she knew she had to see him. She needed to look him in the eye. She’d know from that even though perhaps she should have known just from him saying so. It had been two very hard years since it had happened, and two years in which people had treated her like a criminal just because of her maiden name.
It wasn’t an excuse by any means but perhaps it would serve as an explanation. He had seemed so hurt that she hadn’t believed his innocence but hopefully they could both learn and grow from this. Or at the very least she could help him, she could be there for her favourite cousin as she had been before.
She sat near the window sipping a cup of tea and couldn’t help but stare into the distance as the nerves and guilt threatened to overwhelm her.
Sirius walked into the "Starbucks" coffee shop that he and his cousin had agreed to meet in and scanned the room until he saw her sitting by the window. He supposed he could have seen her sooner if he'd been paying closer attention on his way past, but that was neither here nor there.
He walked over to her, glanced at the empty seat across from her, but didn't sit. "Andromeda," he said gruffly, like he had to clear his throat, which he didn't do. "You look well." Small talk wasn't easy for him, never had liked it, but lately it'd been getting worse.
Andromeda looked up to the sound of her name and immediately was worried. He was uncomfortable and she’d made him feel like that. She met his gaze and nodded, she knew now, the answer to the question she’d wanted to know. “Please sit down.”
She made an effort to keep eye contact with him as she spoke. “Look, I didn’t make things easy, when I got here. But it’s been a hard few years for both of us in very different ways. I spent so much time trying to figure out what had happened. Believing you couldn’t have done that. And here, with you now, I do believe you. I don’t understand it all. I don’t understand how it all could have happened but you’ve never lied to me about something so important so...please forgive me.”
He sat, keeping the chair scooted away from the table, just in case he needed to leave in a hurry. But this was Andromeda, the cousin that he liked best, so it was really just the last few years and the mess Azkaban had made in his head that heightened that flight reaction in him.
"There was no reason for you not to believe what you'd been told," Sirius said after a long moment in disbelief that she was asking him for forgiveness. "There's nothing to forgive."
There was though. She should have tried harder to see him. Believed him. She should have done a lot that she didn’t do.
“I didn’t for a while. I denied it to myself. And for that I feel terrible. It was just hard to see any other possibility. And I had to be very careful after that. Every move I made was watched, people at Mungo’s refused to let me be their Healer, it was an awful time. And Nymphadora was still quite young. That said, I’m still sorry. I know you Sirius, I should have let that be enough.”
She paused, she had had no one outside of her husband whom she could really talk to about any of it for so long. The Order trusted her and her supervisors at the Hospital trusted her but she could see it in their eyes sometimes. Just a hint of wariness.
“The worst was...I was assigned to Frank and Alice one night. Just check in, make sure they were comfortable and everything. No one had really thought about it...but Alice saw me and she screamed, she screamed until someone else came. Because for a moment she thought I was Bellatrix.”
He shook his head. "Everyone believed it," he said hoarsely. "It couldn't have been that much of a stretch, all that bloody prejudice just because of our last name." If he weren't inside a public eating establishment, he might spit to punctuate it. "It shouldn't have mattered, but it did." How many people believed he was the traitor just because of his name? People always would, now.
Sirius hated the thought of anyone being treated that way because of things he did, let alone things he didn't even do. His scowl deepened as he listened to her, then was replaced by a confused furrow when she started talking about Alice and Frank. "Wait, what happened to the Longbottoms?" he asked.
“Our name is mud. There’s little we can do about that unfortunately. Even though I married Ted, to many I’ll always be Andromeda Black. No matter what I say or do.” It was something no one else but Sirius could understand, growing up with that name and trying to be better than the rest of them. Oh there had been others who had been blasted off that stupid tapestry. Ancestors of theirs, but for them, there was really only each other. That was part of why they had been so close, and why it had been so hard for her to deal with his imprisonment and supposed crimes.
When he queried about Alice and Frank she blinked. Of course he wouldn’t know. He was innocent, how could he have known what the Death Eaters had planned for the other family they believed could harbour a child born to defeat their Dark Lord.
“...I’m so sorry, of course you couldn’t have known. The Lestranges, the brothers and Bellatrix, they...they found them after everything, after it all had settled, we all thought it was over. They...they made them insane. Repeated use of the Cruciatus curse...I’d never seen anything like it when they were brought in. They won’t get better Sirius...they’ve lost any semblance of sanity. It's why the three ended up in Azkaban too.”
"Fuck," Sirius said, then managed another litany of swear words under his breath as he let the realization that it wasn't over, even with You-Know-Who gone. He should have known better, that his cousin and her insane husband would do something like that. He shook his head. "That's awful." He rubbed his hands over his face, hunched over in his seat a little.
"Merlin, this is shite," he muttered.
She was no less worried about him now. Ideally she wouldn’t have mentioned them but it had just slipped out. “It is.” she said simply. “It’s incredibly shite and it’s cruel and it’s unfair that our friends have to suffer like this because of a madman who thinks we’re somehow better than others simply due to accidents of birth. Pureblood. I hate the word.” she said with a shake of her head.
“Is there anything I can do? Anything you need? I feel like I’ve made this worse.”
He shook his head. There was little she could do, that anyone could do, really. Something in the back of his mind told him he had a second chance, a second lease on life here, and maybe that was something he could latch on to. "Not sure there was really anything worse than losing James and Lily and then being locked away because of it," Sirius said dryly.
“No. No there’s nothing worse.” she said softly. “But this place, maybe it can be different here. I mean it brought people here that we know are dead at home.. Maybe...maybe there’ll be others.” she said simply. She looked over to her cousin with a soft smile.
“And we can start over, can’t we. I missed my cousin. The only other one of the family worth a damn.”
Sirius nodded, though his gaze was unfocused somewhere out the window past Andromeda's head. "Yeah, I - starting over would be good for me, too. Just - I want to forget everything that happened and move on."
“Then we’ll do that. Move on. But if you ever do need to talk, you know you can talk to me, don’t you? I won’t ever push but I’m here if you need me.”
The worry hadn’t really lessened. But this would do for now. He was here and they were moving on from everything that had happened. She’d help him how she could and maybe that would be enough. He had plenty of people here who would do the same.