As promised, updates are coming, if slowly. Thanks to y'all who favorited!

It looks like I already gacked up the timeline. As someone pointed out, if Teddy is 6, shouldn't Harry and Ginny have had a baby yet? Fair point, but I assumed in the epilogue Teddy was graduated, and had come to see Victoire off to her 7th year, so in my head Teddy was 19ish, and James the Younger was 12, so 7 years between them…i.e. Ginny's knocked up but they haven't told anyone yet.

Or, I'm rubbish at timelines, and JKR cannot expect me to respect hers when she has all the men in the Black family fathering babies at 13.

Chapter 2- The Other Black Girl

I could not have been a very pleasant person to work with the rest of that day, but I had calmed down by the time I collected Teddy that afternoon.

The people who minded him were thrown together somewhat haphazardly. Immediately after the war, I had to work. There was a great need for Healers, especially those who had seen the Dark Arts, who knew the effects of Imperius, who knew what a straight week of Cruciatus could do to a person, who had seen even darker things, like the almost fatal opal necklace Katie Bell had encountered, or some of the nastier things my sister had experimented with.

Immediately after the war, my experience couldn't be spared.

Beyond that, I had eventually realized I needed my work, too. At first, it was because I needed people who knew me as a Healer only, those who wouldn't give me that concerned, pitying look when I walked in a room. I always had worked, even when Dora was young, and we'd always managed to make it. As time passed and there was no longer a desperate need to heal those suffering from war injuries (though they lingered, in the permanent spell damage ward, too many of them), I had gone to part time. Teddy needed my time as well.

There was no shortage of volunteers for babysitting. Harry was always willing to mind him, and Ginny began to offer on her own, in between her wild schedule of quidditch practices. Molly was always happy to have children around, and Dora's friends from Hogwarts, many starting their own families, fell over themselves to help out with her son.

And still, in many ways, Teddy was a very isolated child. It wasn't that he wasn't loved. Everyone went out of their way to see that Teddy never lacked for love and attention. But he rarely played with children his own age, simply because there were no children his own age. Few children were born in the darkest part of the war, and of those who were, fewer had survived- there had been no mercy for children, even infants. Teddy had been spared only because he was with me, and I was under Bella's protection.

Victoire was one of the closest to him in age, and Fleur was most often the one to mind him, with two small children of her own. But even Victoire was still almost two years younger, and, he had begun to notice with some disdain, a girl. There would eventually be other children in the Weasley clan, that was a given, they were Weasleys after all, but Teddy would still be the oldest, and somewhat apart from them.

I thought about sending him to a muggle primary school. It was something Ted had always wanted for Dora, it was what he thought of as a "normal" childhood, but it would never have worked. When little children said too much to muggles about the magical world, it could be generally explained away with "such a wild imagination" but Dora was every bit as stubborn as Ted. If another child denied dragons existed, or photographs could move, or that she could spontaneously turn her hair pink, she would be determined to prove it. In the middle of a war, we hardly needed that kind of attention, so until she was old enough for Hogwarts, Dora learned the basics like most magical children, from Ted and I, or from tutors.

Teddy, on the other hand, would do everything to fit in, and yet I wondered if that wouldn't make things worse. The last thing Teddy needed was another group that made him feel different.

When I arrived at Shell Cottage that evening, he and Victoire seemed to be getting along, sitting at the kitchen table with crayons scattered between them.

"Look Gran!" Teddy held his up one of his already-finished creations.

"Very nice, love."

"Can you tell what it is?" he pressed.

I couldn't necessarily tell from the picture, but anyone who'd listened to him over the past few weeks could guess. "It's a kneazle."

He beamed. "Gabrielle thought it was an Aethonon," he confided.

"Well, perhaps they look different in France," I said. He didn't look convinced, but seemed to consider it. "Let's get going. Thanks Fleur."

She gave us a distracted smile from where she was trying to feed Dominique, who apparently objected. "See you Saturday, Andromeda. Bye Teddy."

"Bye, Teddy," said Victoire, not looking up from her own creative endeavors.

"Granny, please may I get a kneazle?" he took up the subject again as we flooed home. "I'd take care of it, I'd feed it every single day, and they're very smart, you know. Did you know that Hermione had a cat that was a half-kneazle, she told me, only she didn't know then, and do you know what it-"

He cut off when we emerged from the kitchen fire, because we weren't alone. Teddy is not shy exactly, but he likes to watch people and take their measure before he interacts, and he simply had not been around Narcissa enough to feel comfortable with her. And he wasn't stupid, he could sense I was not entirely comfortable around her either. To her credit, she had done her best to be nice to him.

In fact, she had sincerely made an effort to change a lot of things, but that evening, exhausted and on edge from the day, I really just wanted a quiet evening alone. In the five years since the war, it was only really in the last six months I had started to see Narcissa again. In a way, I had missed her, but she was not the girl I remembered anymore, and getting to know the woman Narcissa had become wasn't easy. For so long she had remained the same in my mind, eternally sixteen, I had not taken into account that time and marriage and war and motherhood had changed her as well. There were glimmers of the sister I had known- the surprising insights that came out of nowhere, the talent for mimicry that was sometimes cruelly accurate- but she was a different person. I suppose we both were.

I would never completely forgive her for coming through the war with her husband and son alive and well. But we were the only ones left. We shared a history, and a childhood, and no one else knew like she did, both the good and the bad.

"Hello Teddy," she said, carefully pleasant. Teddy was young, but perceptive, and he hated being patronized. "How are you?"

"Fine, thank you, Ma'am," he replied. Shy or not, I'd taught him good manners. "Gran, may I go play outside?"

"Until it gets dark, but stay in the yard where I can see you." He gave Narcissa a tentative smile- I think he realized she was, in her way, trying to be nice. As soon as he was gone I spoke, "Cissy, it's not that I mind you stopping by, but I've had a really…strange day, and-"

"Oh, don't worry," she waved a hand. "I won't stay long. I just came by here because I wanted to get out of the house. Lucius and Draco are at it again."

Sometimes with Narcissa, it was easier to let her complain and get it out of her system. "Over what?"

"What else? The Girl."

"The Girl" was Astoria Greengrass. She was a nice girl, from a family we knew of. Draco liked her, and I think Narcissa liked her as well. It was, not surprisingly, Lucius who objected to her. The Greengrass family, he insisted, was not old enough, not rich enough, and not pure enough. Stuck in another time, before the war, when purity of blood had mattered, Lucius thought of Draco as the heir of two great houses, the last truly pureblood scion of the Malfoys and the Blacks. As far as he was concerned, few women were worthy to carry on that line, and Astoria Greengrass was not among them.

"Draco is going to have to stand up to Lucius, eventually," was all I had to say on the subject. It was nothing Narcissa had not figured out herself, but she needed to talk through it. That was something else that had changed in Narcissa…she used to be aloof, removed, deigning to talk only to certain people. Now, she talked sometimes as though she just wanted to fill up silence. I could understand that, in a way. Too much silence could fill up with voices you didn't really want to think about.

"Yes, I know…" she said vaguely. It was nothing we hadn't talked about before, and I wondered what was really on her mind. "How was the Potter wedding?"

"Nice." I knew, mostly from offhand comments among Harry's friends, that there was quite a history between Draco and Harry, so I assumed she was asking just out of politeness, and not any particular interest. Although, given something Harry had told me about that night at the Battle of Hogwarts, I wondered…

"Did you hear Rodolphus and Rabastan were released from Azkaban?" she said abruptly.

There it was, and my stomach twisted nervously. Not because I was afraid of the Lestranges, but because of the conversation I'd had that morning.

"Yes, I heard. I had a letter from the Ministry."

"Me too," she was looking beyond me, that kind of faraway looking back at the past. "Rodolphus never liked me."

"Rodolphus liked very few people."

"He respected you."

"I could do without the respect of Rodolphus Lestrange."

Her eyes snapped back to me. "You sounded so much like Bella just there."

"Don't say that, Cissy."

A silence hung between us for a moment. Sometimes, I felt natural with her, it felt like we could go back to being…if not the same, then at least close. At other times, everything still hung between us. We were better, we were talking, but we had a long way to go.

"I should get going," she said briskly. "Teddy will want dinner, and I expect Draco and Lucius have shouted themselves out by now. Thanks, Andy, for…"

She didn't finish the sentence, but I knew anyway. She brushed a kiss over my cheek, and stepped into the fire back to Malfoy Manor. I paused a moment while the spells I had set going prepared dinner, leaning against the counter and trying to collect my thoughts. It was hardly unusual for people to tell me I looked like Bellatrix, though they rarely said it as bluntly as Narcissa had. I was used to people doing double takes, used to them backing away for a moment before they realized that I wasn't Bella, but "the other Black girl."

"Gran? Is it almost dinner?" Teddy was sticking his head in the door hopefully, and it snapped me out of my distraction.

"Almost. Why don't you run upstairs and wash up, and then I think dinner will be ready."

"…and so Nellie …" I trailed off gently. Teddy looked asleep, but it was not unusual he'd pop awake and accuse me of not finishing the story. Since we had no stories in his considerable library about kneazles, his current favorite topic, he had settled for one among the "Nellie the Niffler" series. They had not only books about the adventures of Nellie and her friends, but figures and stuffed toys and even animated films.

This time, he remained asleep, breathing slow and even. I extricated myself carefully and smoothed back turquoise hair before kissing his forehead. His hair color when he didn't change it at all was a medium brown, like Dora's. But her default color, even as a baby, had been the pink, and it seemed Teddy's was turquoise…it was what he went back to when he was relaxed.

As I slipped out of his room and closed the door softly, I felt a shiver that someone was near the house. Even though the war was over, I was careful about security. A series of spells, mostly legal, some not, alerted me when someone was coming near us. The little shudder I felt was just a vague hint someone was there, not that they meant any harm.

Predictably, a moment later, there was a soft knock on the door. I suppose I knew who it was before I opened the door. I wasn't surprised to find Kingsley, without the security detail.

"I owe you an apology."

It was not going to be that easy. The things he had said, about Dora, I hadn't even allowed myself to think about. I crossed my arms.

"Andromeda, I'm sorry. I was out of line. I was…frustrated and worried. I value your friendship too much to lose it over this."

"If you ever say something like that again…"

"I understand."

I stepped back to let him in, and even though I was tired and still vaguely angry at him, some sort of etiquette gene instilled in early childhood kicked in.

"Can I offer you something? Tea? Actually no, forget that, I need a proper drink."

"That sounds more like what I need as well."

"Wine? It's too late for whiskey, I have to be at work at nine."

He chuckled. "Nine? I remember going to work at nine. Those were good days."

I passed him a glass of wine, and sat down across the table from him. "Tell me."

He looked surprised, "What?"

"This supposed dark wizard cult in France. You said yourself, Kingsley- après moi, le deluge. So why is this group in France so much more worrying than a dozen other hopeful dark lords over the last five years? After all, you're taking it on even though it ought to be the French Ministry's problem."

He studied me for a long, silent moment, and then removed a photo from the breast pocket of his robes and slid it across the table.

For a moment I thought it was a picture of me, but when I looked more closely the woman was slightly older than me, her hair was a shade darker, her eyes more blue than gray. And despite the familiarity of it being almost-me, I didn't know her, and that surprised me. Yes, the Black family was old…over a thousand years old, but so obsessed with purity of blood that they had hardly spread around the world, instead marrying within the same small circle of European pureblood families. Certainly there were relatives I didn't know, especially those who had gotten themselves erased from our history by rebelling. Yet this woman was not a shadowy figure from hundreds of years ago, she was wearing modern robes, so she must be close to my age, and so it seemed odd I had never met her.

"Well, I can see why you're asking me in particular, she's clearly a Black."

"Actually, we know who she is…I just wanted to know if you'd ever encountered her," Kingsley said.

"No, not that I remember. Who is she?"

"She's used various aliases we know about, probably more we don't know about, but her real name is Aquila Black."

I sighed. Apparently the celestial naming tradition had endured as well. Not that a woman who named her daughter Nymphadora had any room to criticize. "How did I never know about her?" I wondered, more to myself than Kingsley. "Is she a blood-traitor?"

"Probably because she's never been to England," Kingsley answered. "She's certainly not a blood traitor…very much for the pureblood cause, in fact. She lives in Argentina…mostly. Her parents fled there after Grindelwald was defeated…they had been big supporters of his agenda, the "greater good" and all, and they'd taken it on themselves to...start the purification. They certainly would have ended up in Azkaban. They were responsible for some...ugly things...every bit as ugly as we saw in the war with Voldemort. She was born and raised there, but raised in the "Toujours Pur" spirit nonetheless. And she is, by all accounts, even more fanatic than they were."

"Charming. The Black family: bringing hate and prejudice to other nations."

"She's got quite a following in South America...and even more fled there after Voldemort's first downfall twenty years ago. We've kept an eye on her because she had British connections, but were basically just glad she wasn't our problem."

"I take your past tense to mean she's your problem now."

He nodded. "We caught her sneaking into the country four days ago. The good news is that we caught her...the bad news is, as you say, she's our problem now, and we'd very much like to know why."

I shrugged a bit helplessly. "I can't tell you why. Obviously I didn't even know who she was."

He nodded, drumming his fingers on the table. "If you didn't know her, we can assume she doesn't know you. Maybe she'll talk to family."

"Fam- no. No way. If she's looked at a family tree at all, she'll know exactly who I am...Cissy and I are the only ones in this generation who survived. There's no way she'll talk to me. If she's as fanatic as you say, she'll hate me."

He sighed. "She's not saying a thing, Andy. I'm running out of ideas. I don't want to resort to…less civilized methods of questioning, but the fact that she's showing up now, at the same time this trouble in France is starting…I'm worried. We need to know why she's here."

I sighed, and shrugged. "I can try, but I think you'll be disappointed."

"That's all I'm asking."

"I'm not free tomorrow, but I can come by on Wednesday morning."

"Thank you."

"Darling, you've a bit of something on your trousers that I'm not entirely sure isn't still alive."

Cailean Dresden started at the sound of my voice, nearly dropping the stack of parchment he held, and then carefully placed it on another five-inch high stack of parchment littering his workspace amongst bubbling cauldrons.

"Andy! Is it noon already? Damn, I'd lost track entirely. Did you just walk in? So much for a secure lab," he muttered, grabbing a tissue and scrubbing at the potentially alive stain on his trousers.

Cailean had been a few years behind me at Hogwarts, a teenage Romeo, and the bane of my prefect years. He had also been a surprisingly discreet, if reluctant, witness to my developing relationship with Ted, and what I had not realized that the time, quite a hand with potions.

He was a Slytherin, and a pureblood, and he knew what was expected from him. So the minute he finished Hogwarts, he took off for the United States, wanting nothing to do with Voldemort and his cohorts. He had eventually married an American witch, who he eventually divorced amicably. He had a seventeen-year-old daughter in her last year at an outstanding American magic school, and he had recently come back to the UK.

I'd run into him in Diagon Alley shortly after he'd returned to the UK. We understood each other, knew each other, and as much as anyone from Slytherin can, trusted each other. We had settled into a comfortable friendship, and now we had lunch every few weeks.

He was working in a Ministry research lab…he had little regard for the Ministry, but so long as they let him research the things he was interested in, he had no issue with them.

Having yelled at an intern to make himself feel better about security, we went on to a trendy Diagon Alley café for lunch. I had found that I genuinely enjoyed his company, for the childhood charm and charisma he had been known for had been tempered and somewhat subdued by life, but it still existed…Cailean had been a charming boy, and could be a charming man. In some ways he reminded me of Sirius.

Yet it seemed I had caught him on a bad day, and after a number of monosyllabic responses to small talk, I came to the point.

"You went to South America for a time after you left England, didn't you?

"You mean after I dishonoured my ancestors, betrayed my blood, and destroyed my father's soul like the pathetic little coward I am?" He said, without expression.

"Ah, you've seen your mother recently?" I replied.

He gave me a smile…cynical, but a smile nonetheless. "Right you are, Andy, had dinner with her yesterday. Not sure why I do it, but…"

"Nevermind, don't think of it. Tell me this, how is Natasha? She'll finish her American school this year, won't she? So they must be having them think about what they'll pursue, like they did us…"

It worked, he launched into a proud monologue about her- she was top of her class, she was thinking of pursuing magical law and looking at several excellent programmes in the United States, though he was encouraging her to consider programmes in the UK as well. She had a boyfriend who was, in his opinion, useless. I listened, but didn't say much beyond supportive noises. My feelings about daughters and the men they choose to love were more complicated than could be sorted out over lunch.

Done with his rant about the boyfriend, he suddenly switched gears, "Sorry, Andy, were you asking something about South America?"

"Did you ever encounter a woman named Aquila Black? She's from Argentina?"

He was silent a moment, sipped his wine, and then raised an eyebrow.

"In proper Slytherin fashion, I will answer your question with a question. Why do you ask?"

"Family entanglements, I suppose."

"Family or not…it's a distant connection…you don't want to tangle with her, Andy."

"Speaking from experience?"

"More like observation…" he glanced around, but no one was paying attention to us. Still, he cast a spell to distract unwanted listeners. Not serious magic, just a gentle suggestion to anyone who started to listen that our conversation was mind-numbingly boring. "When I first got to South America, I had just gotten out of school, and, well, you know how grim things were here. I partied- a lot. I drank a lot, experimented with…various substances. There were women- all in an attempt to get over you, of course…" He winked and I saw the teenage rogue he'd been, and rolled my eyes, and he went on. "Pursuing all that, I fell in with a young, pureblood set who were rich and simple…not particularly militant, but Aquila Black- he was using an alias at the time but everyone knew who she was- kept an eye out. Somehow it got back to her who I was, and where I was from, and the sympathies my parents had, and she thought I might be the sort to join up."

He paused while the waiter took our order, and then as soon as he had gone, went on. "I only met with her once, and made it very clear that I had left England to get away from politics. She seemed to take me at my word, she never bothered me again. And I didn't stay in South America all that long."

"What was she like?"

He paused for a long moment, and then said, gently, "Bellatrix. She was like Bellatrix. So, so young, and so, so angry. Beautiful. Enchanting. Could have done great things, but raised with too much hate."

I nodded. I didn't need any further explanation, I knew exactly what he meant.