Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

December 1986  

“Healer Tonks?”

Andromeda glances across to the young and very nervous mediwitch hovering in her office door and arches an impeccably groomed eyebrow in the unfortunate woman’s direction. She misses her usual mediwitch like she imagines she’d miss her wand arm if it ever got splinched. The very competent Yasmin is out on maternity leave and her replacement is nowhere near earning the word competent on her performance review. “Yes, Elise?”

“Your last appointment, Mister Silver, is here,” Elise says walking in and putting a patient folder on the desk. “I’ve put him in the examination room.”

Andromeda frowns. “I don’t have another appointment scheduled.”

She’s very aware of her schedule because she is due to pick up Nymphadora from King’s Cross. Hogwarts finished for the Christmas break the day before. She had only taken on the shift as a favour for a colleague.

“Uh, Healer Galloway stopped by earlier and put him on the list?” Elise stutters. Her face is bright red as she registers that she has failed to tell Andromeda about it until that very moment.

Andromeda glances at the clock. She sighs. Charles Galloway is her direct supervisor and a good Healer. If he has put the man on Andromeda’s list, he undoubtedly has a good reason for it. She’s one of the few Healers who specialises in dark magic.

She closes the folder on her report and slides it into the drawer, locking it with an absentminded wave of her wand. “Please tell the patient that I will be with them shortly.”

Elise bobs her head swiftly and leaves.

Andromeda taps her fingers on her desk. She might get through the appointment in time to pick up her daughter, but if she doesn’t, she risks Nymphadora being left on the platform since Ted is visiting his ailing grandmother with his parents.

She sighs and delves into the large handbag parked behind her chair to pull out a small mirror. “Sirius Black.”

The glass swirls into fog before clearing to reveal Sirius’ smiling face.

“Andi! I thought you were working this morning?”

“I am,” Andromeda says crisply. “I’ve had a late appointment put on my schedule. Can you pick up Nymphadora?”

“I can,” Sirius says cheerfully. “Remus has already arrived so he can look after Harry and Dudley.”

“Dudley’s at your place?” asks Andromeda with a frown.

Her question hides her uneasiness at the mention of Remus being there. On one level, she likes him. He’d always been the more serious and sensible of Sirius’ friends. On the other, he is a werewolf, and despite knowing that he would rather chew his own arm off than hurt anyone, she can’t forget that lurking under the mild-mannered research assistant lurks a dangerous beast. Still, she cannot begrudge him staying with Sirius for the holidays since she knows his mother and father passed away in the summer.

“Petunia’s morning sickness was bad today,” Sirius grimaces. “Vernon took Lilli over for a visit to that sister of his and to drop off the Christmas presents to give her some peace. Dudley refused to go with him on the basis that Marge is a…”

“Sirius!” Andi cut him off briskly, although she didn’t disagree with him. Vernon’s sister is a very bigoted woman who is entirely unpleasant. “If you take Nymphadora to yours, I’ll drop in and check on Petunia.”

Petunia’s third pregnancy has come as a complete surprise to everyone, and it hasn’t had the easiest beginning.

“Can you also mirror-call Ted and let him know?” Andromeda asks quickly. “I need to get on and see this patient.”

Sirius gives her a cheeky salute. “I’ll see you later, Andi.”

The mirror blinks out. She uses it briefly to check her appearance.

The dark green of the Healer robes have always suited her colouring; they contrast nicely with her creamy complexion and her black hair. She presses her lips together at the sight of a grey hair creeping in at the temple. She’s going to end up grey just like her damned mother.

Andromeda sighs. As much as she blames her mother for the grey, she is also somewhat thankful for her maternal genetics which mean that the other signs of aging are nowhere to be seen. She still has the sharp cheekbones of her youth, with minimal lines creasing her eyes and mouth. Her pale grey eyes stare back at her.

She sets the mirror down abruptly.

She really does need to get on and admiring herself in a mirror is not going to get the patient examined and out of the door any quicker.  

She picks up the folder and quickly reviews the information. There is an absence of details which is unlike Charles and the handwriting is Elise’s. She frowns. She strides out into the corridor and heads to the examination room.

The small room has a store cupboard of medical equipment to the right of the door, a very uncomfortable metal chair in the corner of the room in front of her, and a bed against the right wall facing the window. That’s where she finds her waiting patient. Blinds shield him from the weak winter sunlight trying valiantly to light the room since he’s perched on the bed facing the window.

Andromeda swallows the sigh she wants to make and closes the door firmly, engaging the patient privacy and security wards.

Interestingly the man on the bed startles but does not look around. She walks further into the room to face him.

“Mister Silver?” Andromeda begins, aiming for a pleasant but professional tone. “I’m Healer Tonks. I will be examining you today.”

The man turns to her and removes a ring. The glamour of an elderly man falls away to reveal a much, much younger man with a very recognisable face.

“Regulus!” Andromeda surges forward to hug her young cousin as he slips off the bed to stand.

Regulus had gone missing in the latter part of the war. They’ve never known what had happened to him. She knows his grandparents have assumed that he’d been killed, but Sirius had always hoped he’d survived.

Andromeda has always been fond of him, even though he had espoused the same pureblood rhetoric of her parents and his. It had hurt when he’d simply followed after his mother and cut Andromeda out of his life after she’d married Ted.

But right at that moment, Andromeda can’t hold the awful prejudices he’d been indoctrinated from birth in against him. She just wants to relish in the knowledge that he’s alive.

Regulus huffs but his arms come around her just as eagerly.

They hold each other for a long moment.

Andromeda eases back and examines him critically. He looks worn. There are dark patches under his eyes which are the same colour as hers. His long dark hair has a streak of grey on the left-hand side. His expensively tailored dark blue robes cannot hide how his pale complexion is slightly grey, and empty of healthy colour.

“You’re ill,” Andromeda says briskly, although her heart gives a small skip at the realisation.

Regulus nods. “For a while.”

Andromeda hums. “Let me run the diagnostic.” She pushes him back and gestures for him to sit again on the bed.

Regulus follows her instructions as she performs the first diagnostic spell. “I should apologise. I Confounded your nurse to get on your schedule.”

Andromeda huffs. She’s a little mollified at the news that Elise is not completely incompetent. “I’m sure it didn’t take much to confound her.” She peers at the floating diagnostic and frowns. She moves onto the second and third spells normally used in quick succession to check her suspicion.  

“You look well, Andromeda,” Regulus says softly.

“I am,” Andromeda shifts her gaze to meet his tired eyes. “You want to tell me why you’re spending time in the presence of a horcrux?”

Regulus freezes. “What?”

Andromeda arches one perfectly groomed eyebrow at her cousin who squirms in the same way that he always did when he’d been caught in a lie. When he doesn’t speak, she simply stares him down.

Regulus grimaces. “You-Know-Who, he…he asked to borrow Kreacher, only I ordered Kreacher to return home as soon as his task was done. When he returned, he was dying from a potion that You-Know-Who had forced him to drink. I managed to counter the potion and saved him. He told me that You-Know-Who had him help hide a bad locket in a remote place.”

“You went after the locket,” Andromeda surmises.

Regulus nods. His gaze goes momentarily distant. “Siri had sent me a letter the day before. I almost didn’t read it.” He shakes his head. “But I decided to read it before I went to get the locket and I was thankful I had. He’d had a premonition of my dying, of being turned into an Inferi after drinking a green liquid in a seaside cave. I was cautious after that. I managed to get around You-Know-Who’s traps to get the locket and get out alive.” His gaze returns to her. “I’ve been hiding away with it ever since, trying to find a way to destroy it.”

“Why didn’t you come forward after he died?” asks Andromeda, folding her arms over her chest. “Everyone thinks you’re dead!”

“Because you and I know that a horcrux means he isn’t dead, not really,” Regulus says crisply. “I need to destroy it before I can even think about returning. I ordered Kreacher to keep me a secret even from Mother. I just can’t risk the Dark Lord’s retribution, nor that of the Ministry. I’d go straight to Azkaban.” He pushes back his left jacket sleeve to reveal the grotesque Dark Mark there.

Andromeda shudders at the sight of it.

“I wouldn’t be here now,” Regulus admits, “but I need the tonic that Kreacher usually brings me every month.” A worry line appears in the middle of his forehead. “He didn’t come when I called this morning and…is he alright?”

She grimaces again at the mention of Walburga’s grubby elf.  The mention of him stirs her memory and…she wonders if Regulus is even aware of his mother’s death. “Regulus, I’m sorry if I’m the one to tell you this, but your mother died last year.”

Grief momentarily creases her cousin’s face. He nods. “I know. Kreacher…he was distraught. He came as soon as it happened.” He sighs. “Kreacher said everything went to Sirius, and he’d been ordered to look after the house?”

Andromeda nods. “Except Sirius finally asked your grandmother to sort out Grimmauld Place last month on his behalf.”

Both of them understood without words that Sirius’ interest in sorting out his former childhood home was non-existent.

“I think she said she’d sent Kreacher across to one of the Black properties abroad with orders to stay there,” Andromeda continues.

“She must have ordered him not to respond to any other Blacks too otherwise he would have come to me,” Regulus says, realisation crawling over his face.

Andromeda nods. It was a sensible precaution since Narcissa was still married to Malfoy. That bastard had swanned out of his short sentence in Azkaban and taken his place back in society with barely a ripple of consequences. “What’s this tonic?”

Regulus looks deeply uncomfortable. She notes that his fingers worry at the edges of his jacket like they used to when they were children and he was nervous.

“Something Severus put together for me,” Regulus confesses with a deep sigh.

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Severus Snape?!”

“We were friends, Andromeda,” Regulus says quietly. “We both regretted choosing to follow You-Know-Who. I don’t know exactly why Severus became disillusioned, but I know by the end of it, he wasn’t following him anymore and he was safe to approach about the damage I was feeling from being in the horcrux’s presence. He devised the tonic for me, gave me the recipe. Kreacher used to buy the ingredients, brew the tonic, and bring it to me.”

“Snape knows about the horcrux?” asks Andromeda sharply.

Regulus shook his head. “Just that I have an artifact of the Dark Lord’s which is damaging my magical core and channels.”

She holds his gaze firmly. “And why haven’t you approached him now if you trust him?”

“Because he’s locked up at Hogwarts and he’s beholden to Dumbledore,” Regulus says simply. “I don’t want to go anywhere near that school or that old goat.”  He looks at her beseechingly. “I came to you because I thought you might be able to get me into Grimmauld. If I can find the recipe, I can make the tonic myself.”

Andromeda cannot blame him for his caution. She rubs her forehead and paces away briefly as she considers Regulus’ illness. She thinks she knows what tonic Severus used as the base for whatever he came up with for Regulus, but it’s a stopgap, a bandage, not a fix.

“You can’t continue to be in the presence of the horcrux,” Andromeda says out loud as she stops pacing and stares out of the window, her mind racing.

“I can’t exactly just abandon it,” Regulus points out, a hint of irritation creeping into his tone.

“You have to destroy it,” Andromeda says.

Regulus huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “You think I haven’t tried? Corrosive acid, fire, everything!”

She looks at him pityingly. “Basilisk venom and fiendfyre are the only methods of destruction outside of the horcrux owner using a Killing curse or doing the ritual to reabsorb it.”

“How do you know that?” demands Regulus.

“Because this isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with one,” Andromeda says briskly. “We discovered one soon after the Potters died.”

Finding it in Harry had been one of the worst moments of her life. Telling Sirius had been another.

She and Sirius had done a great deal of research in the wake of getting the leech out of Harry. Andromeda blesses the fact that she’d specialised in Dark Magic recovery. She’d been taught about a transfer ritual for a horcrux lodged in a living being. It was rarely used because typically the living receptacle rotted from within because of the horcrux’s presence before it could be enacted. Harry had been incredibly lucky that whatever Lily Potter had done had wrapped her baby in a protection ward that had kept the soul leech contained. They’d been able to extract the horcrux from Harry and place it in a wooden spoon which Sirius had set alight once they’d gotten it under the wards at Castle Black to deal with.

Andromeda has often wondered if Dumbledore knew when he’d left Harry with Petunia that Harry was a living horcrux for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. She sincerely hopes that he did not. She’s always respected the old wizard even if she doesn’t like him very much.

“Is that why Sirius went abroad?” asks Regulus, yanking her attention back to the present. Curiosity and longing skates across his face.

“Sirius is the best at fiendfyre,” Andromeda continues, ignoring his question. She still remembers the fiery Grim and the large stag which had set the wooden spoon aflame. “If you can get the horcrux to him, he’ll deal with it.”

“No,” Regulus shakes his head frantically and jumps down from the bed. “No! I can’t face him, Andromeda! I can’t!”

Andromeda looks at him with pity. “He still loves you, Regulus.”

Regulus drops his head into his hands and sobs.

Andromeda waits a beat before crossing over to him and pulling him into another embrace. “He loves you! Your grandparents love you! You’d be welcomed back!”

“I don’t deserve to be welcomed back!” Regulus mutters into her shoulder. “I hurt people! I followed that Dark tosser because everyone said I should, because I couldn’t stand up to my parents, and I…Merlin! I helped my parents hurt Sirius! I never stood up for him, not once and he protected me time and again!”

Andromeda sighs. She waits until Regulus has collected himself again. “The tonic is a stopgap,” she informs him bluntly. “If you don’t destroy the horcrux, you’ll continue to sicken even with the tonic. You’ll eventually get organ failure and die, Regulus. The tonic has clearly been slowing the effects but it won’t stop them.”  

She hates to admit it but it is probably a testament to Snape’s skills as a potioneer that Regulus has survived to date.

Regulus takes in a heavy breath and straightens. He closes his eyes. “What do we do?”

“I’ll treat you now for the damage I can see already setting in,” Andromeda says. “You return to your hiding place and retrieve the horcrux. You’ll come to my house on Christmas Eve morning and come with me to Castle Black. We’ll destroy the horcrux.  At least we know that should end You-Know-Who. Your grandparents will likely have a plan to help reintroduce you.”

Regulus sighs. “I’ll come to your place at Christmas Eve, and I’ll give you the horcrux, but I’m not coming back, Andromeda.”

“Regulus…”

“You have to know that he made more than one,” Regulus interrupts her.

Horror floods her.

“What?” Andromeda breathes the word out in barely a whisper.

“He made more than one,” Regulus repeats. “The night before he asked for Kreacher, he disappeared from the meeting with Lucius and the Lestranges, Bella. They came out holding bags. I think he gave them each a horcrux to protect.”

“That’s three,” Andromeda says faintly. Then Harry was likely a mistake, she thinks, a result of an already fractured soul…

“Seven,” Regulus whispers. “He always liked the number seven.”

“Dear Merlin!” Andromeda slumps to lean against the bed and stares out towards the window, barely registering the sunlight still trying to get through the blinds. With the benefit of hindsight, she suspects that Sirius likely believes that there are more. It certainly explains why he’s still committed to living behind the formidable wards that encompass a large part of the town.

“I need to make this right,” Regulus says as he leans against the bed beside her, his own face directed back to the window.

Andromeda rubs her forehead. “We need a plan. Something better than you running around on your own trying to find the things. Your health is precarious as it is!”

Regulus makes to speak but she cuts him off.

“You know I’m right,” Andromeda turns to face him with a fierce glare. “This is too important, Regulus! That insane bastard cannot be defeated until we have found and destroyed every single one of the things!”

Regulus deflates and nods.

“Right,” Andromeda says out loud. “First things first, we get you treated. You will go back to your hideaway…” she grimaces as she realises that she’s going to have to sacrifice her mirror, “I’ll give you a means of communication. I’ll discuss this whole thing with Uncle Arcturus and Aunt Melania, and we’ll take it from there. Are we agreed?”

Regulus sighs and pushes his hands into his pants’ pockets looking very much like the sulky teenager she’d last encountered before that day. “Sirius is going to hate me.”

“Sirius loves you,” Andromeda pats him on his shoulder, her own heartbeat calming down with every breath now that there is a way forward. “Come on. Let’s get you set to rights.”

She focuses on her job. It is a gruelling session, even with Snape’s wonder tonic there is a lot of cellular damage caused by the pervasive dark magic of the horcrux. After the last spell, she checks the time and is not surprised that a full hour has passed.

Regulus lies flat on the bed, breathing normally, a healthy colour back in his cheeks. He opens his eyes slowly and she can see the wonder at the lack of pain wash across his expression, making him look impossibly young.

“I’m going to retrieve the communication device,” Andromeda says quietly. “Just rest here until I’m back.”

“Andromeda…”

She’s almost at the door, but she turns back with a questioning look.

Regulus attempts a smile. “Thank you.”

Andromeda nods tightly. She’s never been able to accept the thanks of patients when she’s just doing her job. She closes the exam door softly and hurries back to her office.

The mirror is where she left it, face down on her desk.

She picks it up and bites her lip. She glances at the clock on the wall. She raises the mirror.

“Sirius Black,” Andromeda says firmly. She waits impatiently while Sirius’ face forms in the glass.

He grins at her. “Andi! Look who I have here!”

She swallows around the lump in her throat because she realises that he thinks she’s called to speak to her daughter.

Nymphadora lurches into view.

At thirteen she’s stuck in the awkward moment between girl and woman; a face still carrying the softness of a child, but with eyes that are starting to lose their innocence with every step she takes into the world. Andromeda can still see her daughter even if Nymphadora wears another form. She manifested as a metamorphmagus at three and Andromeda had learned how to identify her daughter regardless as a survival skill. It is almost a surprise when Nymphadora chooses her natural form, but Andromeda has noticed she often does around Sirius who is her favourite person in the world.

She smiles warmly at her gangly teen’s heart-shaped face. “Nymphadora.”

“Mum!” Nymphadora rolls her dark eyes. They are the same shade as Ted’s; a warm milk chocolate. “I told you I want to be called Dora now!”

“Your friends can call you Dora,” Andromeda says dryly. “I’m the one who birthed you for twenty hours, I get to call you the name I gave you.”

Her daughter rolls her eyes again, but they are alight with amusement as though she never expected Andromeda to agree. “Thank you for sending Sirius to pick me up! It was awesome! I got like so many cool points from him being there! And you should have seen the colour Mrs Weasley turned!”

Andromeda feels her heart sink a little. When she’d asked Sirius to pick Nymphadora up, she hadn’t considered how much of a stir Sirius still makes when he’s seen in the British wizarding world.

“Charlie almost couldn’t believe it!” Nymphadora babbles on.

Andromeda hides the grimace she wants to make at the mention of Nymphadora’s best friend. Molly Weasley had looked after Nymphadora and homeschooled her along with Charlie when Andromeda had gone back to work. She still wishes she and Ted had come up with another solution. Molly’s a good woman, but she’s judgemental and has never hidden her distaste for Andromeda’s Black origins or her distaste for Andromeda being a working mother. Maybe they should have shifted Nymphadora into Sirius’ care once he and Harry had settled, but Andromeda had thought it best to keep things the same instead of rocking the boat.

“Are you coming to pick me up now? Only Sirius said we could make hot chocolate and make paper-chains!” Her dark eyes look pleadingly at her mother.

Andromeda rustles up a smile. “Actually, I was calling because I need to run an errand before I come pick you up. Can you pass the mirror back to Sirius?”

Nymphadora nods rapidly. “Awesome! I’ll see you later, Mum!”

“See you later, Nymphadora,” Andromeda says dryly, accepting with a twinge how easily Nymphadora accepts her absence.  

Sirius appears again. His eyes, the same eyes as Regulus, as her own, narrow on her.  “Is everything alright, Andi?”

Andromeda keeps the wince off her face with all her learned practice of controlling her expressions as a Healer. “I’m fine, Sirius. The last examination was difficult and now I need to take care of something else. Are you alright with Nymphadora for another hour or so?”

“Of course,” Sirius said, “she’s always welcome. In fact, she’s a bonus today since she’s helping us keep Harry and Dudley entertained.”

Andromeda pushes away the rushing urge to tell Sirius about Regulus. Soon, she thinks; she and Regulus just need to talk everything through with Arcturus and Melania first; get a plan together. It’s the right thing to do, she tells herself sternly.

“I’ll see you soon,” Andromeda forces the words out.

Sirius nods solemnly, a sure sign that he knows that something is up. “See you later.”

The mirror call ends. She debates whether to call Ted to warn him that she won’t have her mirror, but she figures she can call him from Melania’s.

Andromeda keeps hold of the mirror and hurries along to the examination room. She slows as she sees the door is wide open. She takes a breath and walks inside. The empty room makes her stomach churn uneasily.

Her eyes catch on a piece of parchment tucked up against the pillow. She strides over and picks it up.

“Dearest Cousin,

My deepest apologies for leaving without saying goodbye, but this hunt is too dangerous to involve anyone else.

I know now how to destroy the locket now before I find and destroy the others.

Look after Sirius.

Love, Regulus.”  

Andromeda is not surprised when the conjured paper starts to turn to dust in her hand. She huffs an angry breath and stands vibrating with anger and frustration.

Bloody Regulus!

It says something about how awfully he feels about his past that he’d rather hunt He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named rather than face his family, face Sirius. Or maybe, Andromeda thinks with sudden insight, perhaps Regulus thinks the only way he can make it up to Sirius, to regain Sirius’ love, is to take out You-Know-Who.

She snorts.

She knows Sirius still loves Regulus. He has always adored his younger brother; had protected him from the worst of Walburga’s abuse and Orion’s negligence every day of their childhood. She knows it had pained Sirius beyond measure when Regulus had turned away from him once Sirius had Sorted into Gryffindor.

Andromeda can admit to herself that still loves Bella. She’d known as soon as she’d eloped with Ted that her relationships with her sisters were over, especially Bellatrix who was devout in her pureblood belief. Bella had been the worst of their own horrible parents. Andromeda mourns the little girl who’d once played at tea parties with her, but she does not mourn the evil witch who’d tried to kill Sirius.

She whirls around and heads back to her office to pack up and leave. Regulus disappearing on her does not change anything, Andromeda thinks briskly. She’ll go to Arcturus and Melania.

They’ll need to think about how they tell Sirius, what they tell Sirius. He isn’t the same reckless youth, fatherhood has cured him of that, but she knows him well enough to know that he won’t let any kind of threat to Harry exist in the world, especially not horcruxes tying You-Know-Who to life. And then there is the complication of Regulus himself.

They need a plan. 

Step one, Andromeda promises herself grimly, finding and dragging Regulus home so he and Sirius can begin to heal as brothers at last.

fin.

Next story: A Promise to Pay Attention

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