When the Department of Magical Law Enforcement found out Remus Lupin lied about his werewolf status on his auror training application, they somehow didn’t fire him immediately. James Potter chalked it up to the only upside to pureblood exceptionalism, and Remus was both grumpy and relieved to find himself indefinitely placed in the Auror office’s call center. Juggling the phones, direct floo lines, owls, howlers, and occasionally belligerent guests was unglamorous but admittedly more challenging than he anticipated. The office’s full time employees were all too happy to hand him the bulk of the work, sarcastically citing his gift for working with people - a gift that he didn’t develop until much later working at Hogwarts.
This is how he came to be on the phone with Jared Travers in the middle of July the year before Wizarding Britain erupted in Voldemort’s chaos. Travers owned the oldest nightclub in the British Isles, and though refusing service to muggleborns was technically illegal by then and the last time a halfblood was violently assaulted there was over 10 years prior, everyone knew to avoid the Mentat unless you were reputably pureblood. Violence happened elsewhere now, and instead the Mentat was the hub of corruption and dirty deals made amongst families and Wizengamot members. Prestigious pureblood families could rent or buy booths in the Mentat and use the space as neutral territory for conducting business outside their estates. Travers was openly proud of it, and the Ministry turned a blind eye.
Remus had been there once with Sirius, and while he didn’t feel especially comfortable, he understood the allure immediately. Expensive wine was brought to you on someone else’s tab without you ordering it. The lighting revealed beautiful and dangerous-looking people but hid things you itched to see even though you couldn’t dream of what they were. You wanted to be invited from the tables on the main floor to a family booth, wanted a small gesture of intention, wanted a server to whisper in your ear that someone had requested you. The difference between the Great Houses and everyone else was clear, but in the Mentat there was hope even the lower houses could come to deserve the attention of the Greats. The young witches and wizards who saw Voldemort’s final defeat years later would have rankled at it, but at the time the exclusivity would have intoxicated anyone eligible for it - and perhaps those not.
The Blacks had always been a fixture of the Mentat, obviously, but that Most Ancient and Noble House established itself publicly in the new pureblood movement when Cygnus died an untimely death and Bellatrix Black bought out an entire block of the club to conduct her affairs - and Tom Riddle’s as well. Bellatrix developed an overwhelming influence over the Mentat’s patrons; whether Travers came to resent that or not (as Remus would have assumed he would), money was money, and there was no way to refuse the Black family funding and prestige. The Mentat served Bellatrix’ whims.
“Is this the pup?” Travers drawled into the phone.
Remus gritted his teeth. “This is Auror Lupine speaking. What is your emergency?”
“Cut the Ministry-speak. You sound foolish.”
“Who am I speaking with, please?” The other office staff chortled silently while Remus glowered into the phone.
“This is Travers over at the Mentat.”
“Mr. Travers. What can I do for you?”
“It’s “Lord” to you, Remus,” Travers sneered. “Listen, I need you to communicate something very clearly to Barty.” Remus didn’t speak, find something to take notes on, or even barely nod into the phone before the man continued. “The last several days, an individual has been causing a public nuisance entering my establishment, already visibly intoxicated, and disturbing other patrons. As you know, my clientele is conducting important business and their deliberations cannot be interrupted by classless intrusion.”
Remus rolled his eyes but finally found a quill and parchment. “Your staff have let them in multiple days in a row? Why didn’t they bar entry if it was such a problem?”
“She made believable threats of violence to my employees, some of which have been enacted. I won’t tolerate it further.”
“Description of the individual?”
“Oh yeah.” Travers huffed sarcastically in response. “It’s Andromeda Black.”
The fresh auror furrowed his brow as he hesitated. He wasn’t particularly fond of Andromeda. After all, she had been wicked to Ted last year, and there was all the misery she had put Remus himself through when she found out about the werewolf thing. Still, she had never disclosed his secret to anyone else that he could tell and by all accounts had really, truly fallen in love with a muggleborn for a time. She had even helped them publicize their campaign for muggleborn empowerment right after leaving Hogwarts. It had cost her. Reports of her falling from grace with her family abounded, and even those who were sympathetic to the muggleborn cause recoiled from a pureblood bringing shame to the family name - regardless of the nuances of the reason.
“Andromeda Black, kid.” The voice on the line repeated.
“Don’t you accommodate all purebloods, Travers?”
“Andromeda’s status is in question, Remus. Even the Lupines must understand that.”
Remus did understand. A couple years earlier, Andromeda had peaked the top of the rumor mill by renouncing the Black family name and enterprise in order to embrace love, peace, and progress - by which most people assumed meant fucking and maybe even loving a muggleborn wizard. She never ended up marrying Ted, though, and instead she was profiled in the Daily Prophet (and in the Auror department) several times for unemployment, public intoxication, and hospital visits of an unknown cause. When Cygnus died, she showed up at the gates of the Black Manor, where she loitered for three days, begging the house elves to let her see her mother and sisters. It was Bellatrix who finally threw her out, and it had been particularly painful and heartbreaking because Rita Skeeter somehow caught it on camera. The middle Black sister had risen up with visible hope when her older sister had approached her, but Bellatrix had pushed her clutching hands away, shoved a portkey into her robes, and spat a banishing incantation before spinning her off into the streets of Moscow. It seemed like most of the wizarding world saw the recording in the weeks that followed. She was jailed again for public intoxication in a muggle facility before Ted, Frank, and Alice paid her bail and retrieved her. She and Ted rekindled romance multiple times - each time cut short by her trysts with muggle women she bewitched in the London West End. Andromeda was nothing but a pattern these days, and the incident where she released fiendfyre throughout Diagon Alley around 2 am because she was angry at the bartender for cutting her off finally drove her remaining friends away from her. Shortly thereafter, Bellatrix burned her off the family tapestry and formally removed her from the Gringotts vaults and Black family registry in all departments of the Ministry of Magic, leaving her with no inheritance and very slim options for making an income.Yes, her status was in question with everyone.
Remus couldn’t argue for the middle Black sister, but it still didn’t sit right with him. “Why are you calling the Ministry, Travers? You have your own muscle at the Mentat.”
“We’ve done all that we reasonably can to prevent her from bothering guests and from hurting herself and others, but she becomes increasingly belligerent each time we remove her from the property. Last night, she swore she would come back today.” When Remus didn’t respond in the man’s brief pause, Travers continued. “I respectfully request that Magical Law Enforcement assist us in protecting our clientele.”
“Respectfully, this doesn’t feel like a Ministry issue.”
“Respectfully, Remus, if the Ministry doesn’t support us, we will take matters into our own hands and she will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the desires of the House of Black.”
“Oh, so this is a family matter…” Remus attempted to dodge the request once more.
“It is actually escalating to an attack on the Black Head of House, and there is less tolerance in my facility for that kind of threat than there is for a blood traitor.” The man’s voice finally turned cold. “That means Andromeda has two strikes against her, and we won’t tolerate a third. Tell Barty to handle the matter, or he will have a much more challenging situation to manage.”
***
In Crouch’s office, Remus sat between Moody with his new magical glass eye and Eugene Rowle.
“Sir, we shouldn’t be involved in this,” he pleaded with the head auror.
“I agree,” Moody’s eye rolled about in its socket. “This is a family matter.”
“On the contrary,” Crouch tapped his forehead, “a Black family matter is a Ministry matter.”
Moody’s eye settled on the man behind the desk. “You can’t be serious. Has Bellatrix bought you out too?”
“We can’t afford to be on opposing terms with her as a department, Alastair. Besides, Andromeda is an embarrassment to purebloods and a menace when she’s drunk - which seems to be a recurring event - and no one needs that kind of complicated figure to re-emerge in the current public climate. It’s our job to protect order.”
“She is disturbing the order.” Rowle, a mountain of a man they called “Huge Eug”, growled. “And threatening a Head of House.”
“There’s no way she’s threatening Bellatrix.” Remus threw up his hands. “If Bellatrix felt threatened, Andromeda wouldn’t stand a chance and no one would have to call the Ministry to protect her.”
“Remus, I know you’re sympathetic to her,” Crouch peered at the young auror, “which is yet another thing we will overlook for the sake of your father. So tell me, do you really want Travers’ people dealing with her off the record? Would that feel more just to you?”
Remus slumped his shoulders and sighed deeply. “I suppose not.”
“Good,” Crouch snapped. “Then you’ll join us tonight at the Mentat. It will be… educational.”
***
Andromeda was complicated, but if there was one thing everyone knew about her it was that she would never threaten or try to hurt her older sister. They had been bound at the hip until Andromeda started seeing Ted, and her unwillingness to renounce that relationship later became a sticking point for all of their friends - especially James and Lily. As the auror team settled into their places at the Mentat, marginally undercover, it was obvious to Remus that accusation of threatening Bellatrix was simply a justification for how they meant to treat her - they meaning Travers, the Great Houses, the aurors, and now him apparently.
The whole place hummed with a subtle merriment that comes from power, prestige, and the pursuit of those things. Bellatrix Black, true to the rumors, poured bottles of expensive wine for the myriad witches and wizards who visited her vaguely private block of the room. Her poker face was accentuated with alternating bouts of sweetness and poison; those coming or going from the Black booth were abuzz with loosely veiled excitement. There was incense in the air and a sultry cello quartet playing at the perfect volume for eavesdropping.
Dread coiled in Remus’ chest, however - an anxious symptom that had developed around the time of his werewolf encounter. The nerve of Travers, he thought. Most of the people in the venue couldn’t hold a candle to Andromeda in terms of power, magic, or simple purebloodedness. Even with her recent straying, she was superior in magic and charisma - a package of personality and strengths that the other houses only dreamed of having. The mystique of the Mentat spoiled for him somewhat; if the middle Black sister was anathema here, who could ever be accepted? And yet, Remus recalled, he and the others had also repudiated the woman on account of Ted. Her departure from her old ideology hadn’t been enough for them. It dawned on him that they’d expected something impossible of her: to both be the poster child for the conversion of the darkest, heaviest, and most volatile houses and to eradicate everything about herself that was dark, heavy, and volatile. The whole point of her enrollment in the muggleborn campaign was to show that even the purest blood and greatest witches and wizards could accept and support their liberation and empowerment. They needed her to be what she had always been, but when the time came, they didn’t actually want it. Not that they couldn’t come up with other reasons to distance themselves from her, but that day in the Mentat he saw that it really came down to this.
45 minutes after their arrival, long enough for Remus to hope it was all a big to-do about nothing, a lone figure with her recognizable aphrodite figure appeared at the Mentat’s entrance. That was Andromeda Black, all right. Always taller and fuller than expected, both physically and with magic, even the purest of purebloods still hushed at her arrival. It must have been raining outside, because her robes were soaked and dripping water.
One of the bouncers stopped her at the door. “No more. I told you not to come back.”
The woman’s brown eyes flashed purple at him, then green for a moment before going dull. “You’re not bad ‘nough to do ‘n’thing about it, bitchboy.” Sure enough, as drunk or drunker than Travers had made it seem.
She shoved the man through the door out into the night and locked it behind her; he banged violently on the door and swore at the handle that wouldn’t unlock with any spell he could think of. Several men and women throughout the club rose up from their seats, coiled for action, though not yet moving.
Travers appeared from the back room. “Andromeda, there’s no need to embarrass yourself anymore. You know you shouldn’t be here. It’s time to give up and leave.” To his credit, Remus thought the man was remaining relatively neutral for someone otherwise so obviously committed to a side. If there was anything purebloods wanted to avoid, it was always embarrassment.
“M just here to see Bella. Get outtathway.” The middle Black sister stumbled into not one but two separate tables as she wound her way through the room toward Bellatrix’ section.
Travers intercepted her. “You were warned. Bellatrix doesn’t want to see you. Get out.”
“You don’ know fuckinnything ‘bout her or us so shuttup, Travie.” Andromeda ducked to his side and swiftly pushed him to the floor with surprising control for someone who was so intoxicated. “Bella! Bella.”
The others were too far to reach the woman quickly, and she covered significant ground toward her older sister. “Bella, please thalk to me. I made a mistha- mistake.”
A man and a woman from a nearby table swarmed her with outstretched arms, but she kept slurring words out while she barrelled through them. “I was young, you have to understand, was wrong to leave. You and me, Bells - we’re better together. I didn’ even knowhim well‘nough to do what I did forhim. I get it now-”
An explosion from somewhere to the right lifted the witch off her feet and back several meters into the main part of the room. Bellatrix stared expressionless at her through the dissipating smoke while the others at her table shifted uncomfortably. The Black Head of House didn’t move; her sister’s approach didn’t seem to warrant response.
Andromeda struggled to her feet, wiped damp locks of hair from her face, and whipped out her wand. “Bella, jes listn -”
“Put your wand down!” Crouch’s voice rang out and shook Remus from his stupor. The young auror hopped to his feet and drew his wand when he saw the others already in position.
The woman was impervious. She fired a round of spells at the witches and wizards haphazardly forming a barrier between her and her still-seated, unmoving older sister. “Bella, I’m no good, I know. ‘M not evn good at spells ‘nymore-” Yet a slicing jinx, a geyser of some foul-smelling substance, and a spell that propelled two tables erupted from her wand all at the same time and crashed into the gathered purebloods. “‘M not half the witch I was with you, please…”
“Andromeda, stand down!” Remus heard himself cry out. “Andromeda!” His words were almost shrill enough to drown out Crouch’s tactical commands to his team.
Auror-marked spells began to fly at her. Some merely glanced off of some invisible shield she had cast in front of her face. One caught her solidly in the wand arm, but as she slipped out of the way of another, her free hand landed a fist squarely in the teeth of an oncoming wizard in striking distance. When the back of his head hit the floor, he flopped immobile in front of her, and she almost tripped on him as she pushed toward her sister again.
“Bella!” The desperate woman rushed forward, casting another unknown spell with a wild swing that landed in Moody’s chest as he approached her. “I was drunk when I left, drunk at the Manor, said stupid shit, drunk I swearmsorry. I’d be different for you, clean up and get better, back to charmin’ and - please just-”
With nothing but Bellatrix’ impenetrable, unbreakable expression between the two sisters, a massive hand appeared out of nowhere, wrapping around Andromeda’s throat, and Huge Eug slammed her on her back between a couple still at their table. With the wind knocked out of her, she was briefly silent as Eug snatched her wand, flipped her over, ground her face into a plate of food, and cinched her wrists together with an enchanted zip tie behind her back (Rowle did enjoy dramatic muggle tactics like that).
“Bella, please! ‘M sorry, so sorry, please! I’ll do anything, I’ll die if you won’t take me back.” The woman puffed out from the table.
Eug, with his huge hands still pinning her down, glanced at the Black Head of House, who barely raised her eyebrows and shook her head. He then jerked the woman up by the wrists and dragged her stumbling through the room and out of the establishment, all the while plagued by the witch’s shameless, humiliating pleas and bargaining. Remus was relieved to leave and not have to witness her disgrace on display for the sacred families anymore.
***
“She’s yours to process,” Crouch barked at Remus once they were back at the Ministry and Eug had stuffed Andromeda into one of the processing rooms and locked her to the chair.
Remus, realizing he had no viable reason to protest, gathered the ledger and quill and joined her in the room with his back to the window where the others looked on. The woman did not acknowledge him at first, but swayed in her seat, staring at the white varnished table in front of her. Blood dripped from her cheek where all four tines of a fork had punctured her skin when Eug had thrown her on the table. After a moment, she gagged and vomited to her side, narrowly avoiding tipping over into it.
Remus felt unpleasant for so many reasons. He sighed. “Okay. Full name, please.”
The woman finally looked at him. Her eyes were empty. “You know m’name, Ray. Don’t needta be all formal…”
“It’s procedure.” He frowned unhappily at the ledger.
“‘Dromeda Persephone Angela Janna… Black.” She accentuated the “ck” very hard.
Remus sighed again and let the quill scribble. “Do you know why you’re being held today, Ms. Black?”
“D’you know why yer a sellout, Ray?” The woman slurred.
“Andromeda, I’m trying to help you.”
“If you wanted to help me, you’d get Bellatrix for me.”
Remus shook his head and couldn’t look at her. “You’re under arrest for breaking and entering, violent assault, and public intoxication.”
“Thank you, sir. You can charge ‘m with whatever; put me in a cell with barrrs- don’t care. Just let me call.”
“Andromeda -”
“I still get to call someone, right?”
“Are you in treatment for anything?” Remus focused on the ledger.
“Callher. She’ll understand, she’ll call me back if she misses it - be ok.”
“Medical, magical or otherwise?
“‘Cause I’m gonna explain and apolgize, swear on the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black,” with the hard “ck” sound again, “kiss the family crest, prolly give m’ allegiance to the Dark Lord, I guess…”
This was the first time the young wizard heard someone use “the Dark Lord” to refer to who they all came to know as “Voldemort”, and it was the first time the term was documented in an auror report. “Do you have reason to believe you’re under the influence of dark magic?”
“She can fix it - everything. She’ll take me back,” the woman whined.
“Are you a danger to yourself?” Remus felt sick to his stomach.
“Fuck that, givme a phone or something, whatever, call her.”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Shuttup!” The woman spat, but tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. The ledger bounced in his lap and the quill slipped with a wave of magic. “What do you wan’ me todo? Who needs to get sucked off to let me call?”
“Andromeda! Why are you doing this to yourself?” Remus cried out, slammed one hand on the table, and covered his face with the other, trying to keep his own tears in.
This beautiful woman and the heart of gold buried somewhere deep within her were crumbling before him, perhaps already beyond fixing. The pureblood woman who had been so strong, willful, and brave for him and his friends not that long ago had wilted beyond someone he recognized or could care for. When he raised his eyes again, she had hunched over with her forehead barely above the table. Tears and snot pooled there while she shuddered silently.
“I’m sorry, Ray.” She finally whispered. “I’m just so alone. Young, drunk, and alone, with no way forward.” It was the clearest her words had been the whole evening. “I am sick.. all the time. Hard to get out of bed, hard to sleep, can’t work, can’t go home. I fucked it all up, Ray.”
Remus pleaded gently. “Let me call someone to come get you.”
There was a dramatic pause followed by hollow words. “Please call Bella.”
Everything caught in Remus’ throat and finally tears did spill down his cheeks. “Goddamn you.” He rushed from the room, feeling the lowest he’d ever been, for someone he had no responsibility to or for.
***
After a moment alone, Remus returned to Crouch’s office with the short report. Moody and Rowle were waiting with him.
“She just keeps asking to call Bellatrix.”
The head auror snorted. “Isn’t that what got her in here?”
Moody, in spite of the feather-patterned burn on his chest where Andromeda’s spell had clocked him, cringed. “Maybe we should call Bellatrix, sir, just to see. Maybe if the call is from the Ministry….”
Rowle shook his head. “I asked her at the Mentat; she didn’t want to see her.”
“Narcissa?”
“Narcissa won’t go against Bellatrix.”
“It’s a damn shame,” Moody said after a moment. “No one deserves to be treated the way she has been.”
“No one,” Remus added quickly, relieved that someone else also felt badly about the situation.
Crouch pursed his lips and shrugged. “No, but she’s making it worse for herself. It didn’t have to be like this.”
This was true, but even Rowle was sad. His voice was cautious. “I will say though… she was one of the greats, especially of this generation. It’s wretched to see a Black heir falling apart like this.”
“Yeah,” Moody agreed. “I didn’t really realize that it was like this, even with all the press.”
Rowle spoke aloud what lots of purebloods on the fence were thinking. “If even Andromeda Black can fall so far, who can afford to join the mudblood cause?”
That’s probably when Rowle started his journey toward radicalization, but Crouch held the unsavory middle ground he would later become known for. “Andromeda was going to be a nutcase whether she joined the cause or not, Eug. Don’t get ahead of yourself. There are no special causes in this department. We keep order by making allies. The House of Black is a powerful ally. Andromeda is unfortunately not, and she’s made herself a scapegoat that can be easily used to maintain order without ruffling feathers and getting ourselves into something we don’t want to be involved in.”
Remus bristled but shook the statement off. “She just needs help.”
“But she didn’t suggest or mention anyone else?” When Remus shook his head, Crouch said, “Well, I guess she’s staying here in a cell then. We don’t have a residence or contacts on record for her.”
“Sir, it’s a waste of space, money, and time to keep her here.”
“Tell me, though, Remus. Honestly. Who exactly is going to come get this snivelling, disgraced, drunk whore? No, no, don’t protest - you know that’s what people see her as, especially since she’s here. Would you take responsibility for her, Remus? No, I didn’t think so.”
Remus grimaced at the truth before a horrible idea dawned on him. “Give me a few hours to figure something out.”
Crouch groaned loudly. “Two. Two hours, Lupine. Then she goes behind bars with the other burnouts.”
***
Remus really did try a few other options, but Sirius, Lily & James, Alice & Frank, even Arther & Molly all politely but firmly refused him. So out in muggle London, he leaned into a dirty payphone with wads of chewing gum dried all over its inside.
Five rings, and then a warm voice answered, “Hello?”
“Ted! Hi!” and then apologetically, “It’s Remus.”
“Ray? Why’re you calling my mum’s house?”
“I’m sorry, but…”
“Ray, is everything ok? Are you ok?”
Goddamn, the man was too good for his own good, Remus thought. “It’s Andromeda.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “What about her?” Ted’s voice was calm but less warm.
“She’s being held at the Ministry of Law Enforcement.”
“For what?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re going to jail her if someone doesn’t come get her.” More silence, and Remus spoke again. He wanted to protect some of her dignity, at least to Ted, but found it very challenging. “She won’t stop asking for Bellatrix.” Even more silence. “Ted, I hate to be like this, but I think you’re probably the only one that will help her. I tried asking around, but no luck.”
Several seconds ticked by before Ted spoke. “She’s not coming to my mum’s house.”
Remus sighed with relief. “Where she needs to go is rehab.”
“When do I need to be there?”
“As soon as you can. I’ll tell Crouch you’re on your way.”
***
Too many people in the department just happened to be out of their offices where they could conveniently watch Ted Tonks escort a not-yet-sober Andromeda Black out of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Of course, it made the Daily Prophet the next day. Within six months, they were married. Barely six more and Tom Riddle went public as Lord Voldemort. And less than two years later, Andromeda gave birth to their daughter the same day Bellatrix was locked away in Azkaban. It seemed the middle Black sister had foreshadowed Bellatrix’s own fall into madness. The House of Black was the first pureblood family to collapse - right at the apex of its power and influence.
Eventually most people forgot about that day in the Mentat and Ministry. Even Ted’s memory of it became hazy over time. Remus, however, re-lived it again and again, and it was the only thing that ever made him question the movement the muggleborn cause became - though he never voiced that to anyone, especially not to Andromeda, because of what the pureblood cause evolved into. Eventually, he died for that cause in the same battle Bellatrix died for hers; neither of them lived to see a wizarding world that didn’t need people like the middle Black sister to carry the weight of a failing system and way of life. The new era began without them, but not without Andromeda - a bittersweet gift to her from the universe