The sitting room at Blacktide had not, Andromeda thought, been decorated so much as settled into.
The bones of it were typical of a castle. The stone walls, stone floor, the high ceiling with its dark oak beams, and the fireplace large enough to stand in. But someone had made it habitable in the way that meant it is fully lived in. A deep rug in dark red covered most of the stone floor, and the armchairs arranged around the cold hearth, obviously chosen for comfort rather than impression. The low table between them held a tea service and a small stack of books that someone had left there and not yet put away.
On the walls, alongside the tapestries that had presumably come with the castle, were smaller things. Such as a watercolor sketch pinned without a frame near the window, a child's drawing tacked beside it that appeared to be either a horse or a very confident attempt of a dog. The windowsills held plants. Not ornamental ones. The purposeful kind, small pots lined up in the autumn light with the organization of someone who used them rather than displayed them.
Even though it looks like an inside of a castle, Andromeda thought, it feels like a home.
"I still can't believe you live in a castle, Sirius," she said, and took a sip of her tea.
Across from her, her cousin had the expression of a man who found the situation faintly amusing and had no intention of pretending otherwise. "Neither can I, most mornings."
When Sirius's invitation had arrived, a proper letter, which had surprised her as Sirius had never been a letter writer, she had accepted before she'd finished reading it. They had drifted apart over the years, and she missed her cousin dearly. They were no bad blood between them, just time getting head of themselves and somewhere in the line, they stopped communicating.
Andromeda still thought about Sirius and had wondered occasionally where he was and how he is. It was difficult not to wonder about Sirius. He had always attracted attention, not only because of his looks, though that had never been a small thing, but because of the quality he had of making every room aware of him without appearing to try. She had lost friends in the war and Sirius was heavily involved on said war. She had spent years not knowing whether Sirius was among the things the war had taken, and she had learned not to ask because the not-asking was easier than the not-knowing.
And then the family meeting had happened, and suddenly the cousin she had been quietly mourning was not only alive but had a family, and that had not been the right moment to reach out because nothing about that afternoon had been the right moment for anything.
She had waited. She had not known how to reach out first.
And then the letter had come.
She had told Ted it would be a cottage. Something modest, perhaps in the country. Sirius had never been much for ostentation even at the height of the Black family's social ambitions, and the Sirius she remembered had always been more interested in his motorbike than in the family's properties.
They had arrived through a Floo connection in what turned out to be a gatehouse, stepped out the door, and looked up.
They were faced with a literal castle.
Nymphadora had said, very clearly, "Wicked."
Ted had said nothing for a full ten seconds, opened his mouth, and then closed it again.
Andromeda closed her eyes trying to figure out if this was a prank, "Sirius Black, you absolute—" and then remembered that she was a grown woman and composed herself accordingly.
Now she sat in the sitting room of the castle in question, watching her husband talk to Esme across the room with the animation Ted reserved for people he found genuinely interesting.
"You've completely forgotten Ted was a Mind Healer," she said.
Sirius glanced over at the two of them. "I had, actually. I knew he was a Healer, I didn't—" He stopped. Watched Ted say something that made Esme tilt her head in the precise way of someone recalibrating their assessment of the person in front of them. "Well, only a healer can understand other healers."
"They'll be at it for hours," Andromeda said, without displeasure.
She knew from twenty years of living with Ted, exactly what this looked like. Healers found each other the way magnets found iron. The specializations were different — Ted worked with minds, Esme with the magical diagnostics — but the underlying language was the same. Once two people who shared it found each other, they tended to settle in as though they had always been meant to be talking. She had long since made her peace with conversations at dinner that involved clinical descriptions of things she had not asked to know about while she was trying to eat. She suspected Sirius had undergone a similar experience.
Near the unlit fireplace, brightened by the afternoon sun through the tall windows, Nymphadora sat cross-legged on the rug with four small children arranged around her in various states of attention. Rigel and Corvus were watching her, not yet sure what to make of her. Lyra crossed her arms and watched Nymphadora like a tiny, silent judge. Sirius had mentioned to Ted and Andromeda, when they arrived, that the children hadn't spent much time with other children yet, which explains why the older three were still finding their footing with strangers, especially other children.
Alphard reacted completely different from his older siblings. He had identified Nymphadora as the most interesting person in the room in just thirty seconds of meeting her and had been following her around ever since. He was currently attempting, for the third time, to climb directly into her lap. Nymphadora, who had not previously considered herself a particularly patient person, was discovering that it was considerably easier to be patient with someone who found you genuinely magnificent.
Nymphadora changed her hair to a vivid orange.
Alphard screamed with delight. Actual delight. The full-body, completely uninhibited delight of a very small child encountering something wonderful, both arms in the air.
"Again," he demanded.
Nymphadora changed it to blue.
Another scream. Alphard clapped his hands with glee.
Andromeda looked at this and felt a wave of warmth that quickly dissolved into a quiet ache. Her daughter, who had spent most of her childhood slightly uncertain about what to do with her gift—who had been told, in various ways by various people, that changing was something to manage rather than something to be—was now being screamed at with unqualified joy by a two-year-old who found it the best thing he had ever encountered.
She thought about the siblings Nymphadora didn't have. She had wanted to give her more than one, but the birth had taken a toll on her body, and the healers told her she might never conceive again. She was devastated. Though the healers had been kind about it, and Ted reassured her that one child was enough for their family, she still thought about it sometimes. Watching her daughter with other children, she couldn't help but wonder what it might have looked like.
"They're wonderful," she said. She meant it plainly.
"They are," Sirius said. He looked at them with an expression she'd noticed several times since arriving — something quiet and certain. It was the look of a man who had finally stopped running, entirely consumed by what was right in front of him.
She looked at him for a moment. This was not the Sirius she remembered. The Sirius of her youth had worn his rebellion like armor—loud, deliberate, pointed, a whole edifice constructed to flash his rejection in everyone's faces. This one was settled. Not diminished, but rooted. A quiet certainty had settled into his bones, occupying the spaces where the anger used to live.
"You invited us first, didn't you?" she said. It had occurred to her on the walk up from the gatehouse, and she had been thinking about it since. "You haven't introduced the children to Grandfather Arcturus yet."
Sirius's expression shifted — not quite a wince, but adjacent to one. "I needed a bit more time before that particular conversation. Besides, I know Nymphadora is going to Hogwarts a few days from now. I wanted her to meet the children before she leaves."
"He'll want to know why he wasn't first."
"He'll want to know when I'm going to take the headship," Sirius said. "Which is a different question and a considerably more exhausting one, because I know he'll never stop pestering me about it."
Andromeda looked at him. "Are you going to?"
A pause. The honest kind. "Yes," he said. "I didn't want to. But — yes."
"Why?" She kept her voice neutral. This was not idle curiosity. She had spent years watching the Black family's political weight sit dormant, watching the dark faction operate without the counterbalance it used to have, watching Lucius Malfoy become the loudest voice in a room that used to have several. She had opinions about what a functioning House of Black would mean for the Wizengamot. She was not going to say any of them until she understood what Sirius was doing.
"There are reasons I can't explain in full," he said. "Not yet. But the short version is — the children need what the headship can provide. Esme needs it too. The protection. The standing." He paused. "And I think the timing is right. Someone needs to be in that room who isn't Dumbledore or Lucius Malfoy and isn't beholden to either of them."
Andromeda was quiet for a moment. That was, she thought, rather more politically considered than she had expected from Sirius, who had historically treated the Wizengamot with roughly the same regard he'd treated Walburga's opinions about suitable friends.
"Good," she said, which was the entirety of what she intended to say about that.
Sirius looked at her. "That's it? Just — good?"
"Did you want a longer response?"
"From you, on a political question? I expected at minimum a position paper."
Andromeda allowed herself a small smile. "I'll send it later." She looked at the children again. Nymphadora had changed her hair to a green so vivid it was almost luminous. Alphard had given up all pretense of sitting and was now simply lying across her legs, craning his neck upward to watch each change with the absorbed attention of a connoisseur. "There's something I wanted to ask you about, actually. Regarding Nymphadora."
Sirius followed her gaze. "Mm."
"She'll be at Hogwarts this September," Andromeda said.
"I know."
" And I am — proud. Of course, I am." She paused. "But once she's finished at Hogwarts, the Ministry will come for her. They always do, with gifts like hers."
Sirius was quiet. She watched him put the pieces together.
"The magical gift mandatory registration," he said. Sirius worked in the ministry for years, so he had an idea what this is all about.
"She'll have to register as a Metamorphmagus." Andromeda kept her voice even. She had been keeping her voice even about this for two years, since she'd understood properly what it would mean. "I know the law. I know she has no choice about that. None of them do — none of those with gifts. But registration without adequate protection—" She stopped. "The Ministry will register her and then they will find uses for her. Glamours, infiltration, anything that requires someone who can change their appearance on demand. They will make it sound like an honor, and it will not be optional, and they will pay her a Ministry salary and call it a career. And she will spend the rest of her working life doing whatever they decide a Metamorphmagus is useful for." She looked at her hands. "I cannot allow that to happen to my daughter."
Sirius said nothing but he kept listening.
"I know what I'm asking," Andromeda said. "I know it is not a small thing. And I know I have no right to come to you after years of — after everything — and ask for the family's protection as though nothing happened." She looked at him directly. "But I am asking anyway. Because the alternative is that I watch my daughter get swallowed by an institution that will exploit her and call it service."
Sirius looked at her for a long moment.
"Andromeda," he said. "You are my family. The fact that we drifted apart doesn't change that. It never did." He said it without drama, in the tone of someone stating something he had already decided was true and saw no reason to elaborate on. "And yes. Whatever the House of Black can do for Nymphadora, it will."
She looked at him. Something in her chest that had been held tight for two years loosened by a fraction.
"Grandfather Arcturus won't like it," she said. "Officially acknowledging a Tonks as part of the Black family—"
"You don't have to worry about Grandfather," Sirius said. "When I take the headship, the decisions are mine. He remains as elder counsel — I respect that and I won't pretend otherwise — but he doesn't have a veto." He paused. "And besides. The Metamorphmagus gift is a Black gift. It came through your line, — you, to her. I have no intention of leaving something that belongs to this family in the hands of Ministry bureaucrats who will use it as a departmental resource." He looked at her steadily. "I won't let that happen."
She was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, she looked back toward the fireplace, where Nymphadora had apparently decided that the hair colors had run their course and was now making her nose progressively larger in small increments, to Alphard's enormous and vocal approval.
"She doesn't know I'm asking you this," Andromeda said.
"No?"
"She'd be furious if she did. She's very — she doesn't like the idea that she needs protecting."
"She's eleven," Sirius said. "She doesn't have to like it. She just has to be protected."
Andromeda glanced at him. "You sound like a father."
"Surprising amount of practice," Sirius said, with the dry understatement she remembered from their youth.
She looked at him for a moment.
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me yet," Sirius said. "Wait until after I've had the conversation with Grandfather."
"I'll send flowers to your funeral," Andromeda said pleasantly.
"That's the spirit."
Across the room, Esme said something in rapid French that made Ted laugh with the whole of himself — the kind of laugh that meant he had been surprised by something genuinely delightful. Esme looked faintly pleased.
And then, from the direction of the fireplace —
"Wooooah. Alphie has ears."
"Pretty ears!"
The room went briefly still.
On the rug near the fireplace, Nymphadora had gone wide-eyed. In her lap, Alphard sat very upright with the expression of someone who had just done something and was waiting to find out what it was. The two-year old's dark hair just turned pink. PINK! And on top of it sprouts, pink and unmistakably feline, were two small, perfectly formed cat ears. They swiveled, experimentally, toward the sound of his name. His actual ears were presumably still where they had always been.
Rigel stared. Corvus stared. Lyra, who had been watching Nymphadora with the quiet judgment of someone deciding whether to join in, was staring with a face that suggested she had absolutely no idea what to make of this.
Alphard reached up, felt one of the ears, and tugged on it. Tears formed on his eyes.
"Don't grab your ears." Nymphadora grabbed Alphard's hands away from the ears.
Sirius had risen halfway out of his armchair.
Esme was already across the room, crouching in front of Alphard with the focused attention of a healer who had just witnessed something clinically unprecedented and needed immediate data. The French came rapid-fire — questions, probably, or possibly observations, possibly both simultaneously — as she turned Alphard's face gently toward her and examined the ears with a professional thoroughness that suggested she had entirely set aside the fact that they were cat ears and was now simply treating them as a medical phenomenon requiring documentation.
Alphard bore this examination with equanimity. He was still patting one ear. It appeared to be soft.
"Mama," he said, and patted the other one.
"Oui," Esme said, in the tone of someone taking notes internally. "Je vois."
Ted had come to stand beside Andromeda, his tea in hand, watching all of this. He looked at her. She looked at him.
"Well," Ted said.
"Yes," Andromeda agreed. "This is unexpected."
On the rug, Nymphadora was alternating between staring at Alphard's ears and staring at her own hands with the expression of someone trying to determine whether she had somehow caused this. After all, she was also sporting cat ears herself; she just hadn't expected the little toddler to sport them as well. Corvus, Rigel, and Lyra were both touching their heads, looking like they wanted to know if they have ears as well.
"Will I grow ears?" Corvus asked curiously.
Everyone looked at Alphard.
Alphard looked back at everyone, ears swiveling forward with interest.
"Ears," he said, with great contentment, and patted them again.
Sirius sat back down very slowly.
"Right," he said to no one in particular.
Andromeda smiled, tracking the familiar chaos. She knew intimately what the early years of a Metamorphmagus looked like. She had lived them with her own daughter. But Nymphadora hadn't done this. She had her first change at five years old. Normal year to be having accidental magic in any form. Alphard Black II is two years old! It was a dangerously early age to be wielding that kind of magic, a thought that should have made her worry—and yet, she found herself trapped in pure, quiet awe.
The ears lasted approximately forty minutes, during which Esme has declared that the transformation has been safe and does not seem to have any side effects to the toddler. Alphard became progressively less interested in his own ears and more interested in whether Nymphadora would change her hair again.
By the time the light had shifted to the amber of late afternoon and Andromeda began gathering coats and locating Nymphadora's bag, the ears had faded of their own accord and Alphard's hair had returned to its usual black, and the two-year-old in question was draped across Nymphadora's lap with the settled quality of someone who had found where he wanted to be and seen no reason to leave.
"No," he grabbed her sleeves when Nymphadora stood up.
"I'll come back," Nymphadora told him earnestly.
Alphard considered this. Then, apparently finding it acceptable, he allowed himself to be transferred to Sirius's arms and watched Nymphadora with the focused attention of someone tracking a thing of value as it moved toward the door.
The goodbyes in the entrance hall were the warm, slightly prolonged kind that happened when a visit had gone better than expected and nobody quite wanted to be the first to properly end it. Ted shook Sirius's hand with both of his. Andromeda hugged Esme, which surprised them both slightly and seemed to surprise Esme most of all, though she recovered quickly and returned it with the careful sincerity of someone who was not a natural hugger but was trying.
Nymphadora stood in front of Rigel and Corvus and Lyra. Rigel and Corvus regarded her with the same focused consideration they'd had all afternoon, though some of the wariness had gone out of it.
"You're going to school?" Lyra asked.
"In a few days," Nymphadora confirmed.
Lyra looked at her for a moment with the grey eyes. "Will you come back?"
Nymphadora blinked. "Yeah. Of course."
Lyra nodded, apparently satisfied, and stepped back.
Corvus said, quietly, "I liked having you here."
Nymphadora looked at him for a moment, "Me too," she said. And like taking on the big sister role, she continued. "Look after Alphie's ears."
"Ears," Alphard confirmed from Sirius's arms, very seriously.
And then they were through the gatehouse Floo and gone, and the castle was quiet again.
*****
Sirius stood in the entrance hall for a moment after the Floo went cold.
Then he said, to the general air, "The ward on the eastern perimeter. I should extend it."
Esme, who was still in the entrance hall, did not look up from where she was straightening Alphard's collar. "The eastern perimeter ward is adequate."
"It covers the cliff approach. It doesn't cover the forest properly."
"The forest ward was assessed weeks ago."
"I know. I reassessed it this afternoon." He had not, in fact, reassessed it this afternoon. He had been in the sitting room all afternoon. Esme was aware of this. "I think there is a gap along the northern tree line."
Esme looked up at him. It was the look she wore when she had identified exactly what was happening and was deciding how to address it. "Sirius."
"It's a legitimate concern."
"The ward covers the forest. The forest ward covers the cliff. The cliff ward covers the sea approach." She held his gaze steadily. "Alphard is safe. He was safe before today. Today does not change that."
Sirius looked at her. Then at Alphard, who was examining his own hands with the focused interest of someone who had recently discovered they were more interesting than previously supposed.
"He manifested a Metamorphmagus ability at two years old," Sirius said.
"He seems fine."
"The Ministry—"
"The Ministry does not know what happened in our sitting room this afternoon," Esme said. "And it will not." She paused. "We will document what happened. We will research what it means for a Metamorphmagus ability to manifest this early. We will take appropriate precautions." She looked at him. "And we will not, at half past four on an otherwise pleasant afternoon, extend the northern perimeter ward based on a gap that does not exist just as added protection just in case the ministry comes. I very sure our wards are strong enough to protect our children."
Sirius was quiet for a moment.
"There might be a gap," he said.
"Sirius."
He exhaled. Looked at the ceiling briefly. Looked back at her. "You're right."
"I know," Esme said, in the tone she used when she was right and was not going to make more of it than that. She set Alphard down and he immediately sat on the floor and resumed his examination of his own hands. "Come and help me with supper."
Sirius looked at his youngest son sitting on the entrance hall floor, investigating his fingers with the expression of someone who had recently discovered they were capable of surprising things and found this entirely satisfactory.
"Ears, papa." Alphard said to his hands, thoughtfully.
"Yes," Sirius agreed. "Ears."
He followed Esme toward the kitchen, and did not extend the eastern perimeter ward, and only thought about the northern tree line twice more before bed.