Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye
Outfit | Rodolphus Azazel Lestrange
Early November, 1981
Tonks Cottage

He didn't want to look at her, and Andromeda knew why... Ted didn't want to be around her, or have anything to do with her, and for as much as she wished that would have been the case sometimes, right now her husband being a complete ass was the last thing that she needed. She didn't need any of this, she didn't need him to tell her that they were monsters, all of them. She knew. She knew who they were and what they did. She had seen the papers, she knew what was going on... She knew that the Potters were dead, she knew that the Dark Lord was gone, and she knew that the fact that she referred to him as the Dark Lord was enough to piss Ted off. She couldn't help it. She had grown up calling him that, and Rodolphus called him that, and that was just his name. And she was sorry. She was sorry for a lot of things, but she wouldn't be sorry that she was who she was. She wouldn't be sorry that she was worried about people she loved. Because she loved them. There were people on the 'other side' of this fight that Andromeda loved. And there was a reason that she never actually picked a side. There was a reason she stood in the middle. She loved too many people to pick a side. Only tonight Ted had picked a side for her. He had picked a side when he had taken Dora, and he had gone to his mums. 

She wasn't going to stand for it. And she would go after him. She would go after him in a little bit, because he could go, he could leave, and walk away, and never look back. But he would not take Dora with him. She was eight for Merlin's sake... And beyond that she was Black. Andromeda would not have her carted off to the muggle world, and he could fight her on that. He could do whatever he wanted, and she would take her daughter back. Because there was not a court in the world that would not side with the pureblood, healer, mother of a young, halfblood, daughter, that's father was trying to take her out of the magical world all together. She would have done anything to keep her daughter with her, in this world, where she belonged. Andromeda didn't think that he knew what he had done when he had walked out that door tonight. Because she had left before... She had left but if there was one thing she had never done, it was pack up their daughter and take her with her. Andromeda had left, but she had never had any intent of actually going anywhere. Not enough to upset the delicate balance that would have been their eight year old's world. She may not have been the hands on parent that Ted was, she may have been the one that was supporting them instead... But she thought that that alone made her the better parent. Thinking of what was best for Dora, and not just taking her with to prove a point. 

He could prove whatever point he damn well pleased, she wasn't going to hear it right now. The only thing that had registered in Andromeda's mind was that he had taken their daughter. She didn't care about anything else, she didn't care about the rest of it, because right now all she could focus on was not the fact that her world as she had known it for a long time was crashing down around her. She couldn't think about what this all meant for her sisters, and for Rodolphus... She couldn't think about what the end of the Dark Lord meant for any of them, because she knew that that was only going to make all of this worse... She wanted to feel better. Andromeda wanted to make this all hurt less so that by the time she did go after him she didn't just kill him... Right now she just wanted to kill him, and she knew that she wouldn't. Aside form ushering in Death for her patients Andromeda had never actually killed someone, and she didn't think that she planned on truly killing her husband, but right now Ted was almost lucky that he was gone. She was furious with him, and she didn't know what to do about it... The only thing that she could think to do was light the house on fire... 

It had been a wedding present. The house. And right now she didn't want it. She didn't want any of it. She knew that she shouldn't do it. She knew that she didn't have any reason to actually want to light the house on fire. Everything that Ted and Dora had was in that house, and it was Dora's things that she would feel bad about burning later, but she didn't want it. She didn't want to look at it, she didn't want any of it. She was mad. She was mad, and she didn't know what to do, and she knew that they were going to be in trouble. She knew that things were only going to get worse, because the Dark Lord being gone meant that there was going to be hell for the people that had supported him and she knew who she wanted right now. She knew who she wanted and what she wanted, and how it would make her feel better. She knew that she should just pack up and go to London and that even if he didn't show up, even if something horrible happened to him, then she could deal with it there. She could deal with it where she wasn't going to do anything that could have hurt her daughter... Andromeda hadn't made it that far though. She was standing on the front lawn looking at the house... Thinking about how easy it would be to just get rid of it... To just watch it all go up in flames... 

then you can tell me goodbye

OUTFIT    

He did not and would not ever regret the choices that he had made. The Dark Lord had fallen—or so most people were saying, or so most all of them were trying to say, but they didn’t believe it. He, and Bella, and Rabastan, and Barty… those who had truly been loyal to him did not believe that he was truly gone. He would be back. But they had to figure out what had happened. They needed to learn what they could about what in the hell had happened, and to do that, they had found themselves at the Longbottoms’ home. There were more violent ways to try to get the answers that they had wanted. He was excellent at that, but they had gone with the Cruciatus. It had not gotten them the answers that they wanted, they had not found out what they wanted, but the Longbottoms would never recover from what had happened, and he thought that was amusing. He thought there was no chance in hell that they would ever be normal again, and that was a form of torture he thought he rather enjoyed. It drew it out… made it last. They had felt more pain than imaginable in their last moments, and although they lived, their lives would now never be the same. For going against the Dark Lord, they deserved that and worse, but he had thought that the punishment would be sufficient enough. They wouldn’t soon forget it.

But now he knew that his days were numbered. He knew that it would only be a matter of time until aurors caught up with him, because they hadn’t tried particularly hard to be subtle when it came to their attack of the Longbottoms. They would come for them, and he knew there was no stopping that. They could try to run, they could try to hide—but he wasn’t going to do that. Rodolphus supported the Dark Lord. To the end. If that meant being arrested for their crimes, so be it. They would be rewarded above all others when their lord returned. To him, that was just an inevitability. Running was no option. Trying to pretend that he wasn’t loyal to him was also not an option. There were ways out of this, but he didn’t want out. It wasn’t to say he wouldn’t try to take down as many aurors as he could when he was arrested, he just didn’t see the point in trying to evade that outcome. It was going to happen. They would deal with it… all of them. Him, and Rabastan, and Bella. Barty might end up avoiding jail time, with who his father was and with his subtlety to the cause, and they wouldn’t rat him out. If anyone got out of this without being sent to Azkaban, they would just be more equipped to help the Dark Lord when he came back.

Their days were numbered, and they knew it. His wife knew it, as did his brother. They were all spending their time according, but Rodolphus… there was something that he needed to do. There was someone that he needed to see, because he likely wouldn’t see her again for a long time. He had no doubt that he would be out of Azkaban eventually, when the Dark Lord rose again, but there was no telling when that would be. There was no telling if she would have fallen for her Mudblood by then, and settled into her ‘happy’ little life, with her kid, and when he got out, there was just a chance he wouldn’t see her at all. So he figured just… one last time, wouldn’t do anyone any harm. He couldn’t go to the flat—well he could, but she would be here. So he had done what he’d never done, and he’d come to her cottage, knowing that her husband was probably home and that there was no good way of doing this. He hadn’t been out there for too long, considering his options, before he heard the door open. His gaze moved in that direction to see Meda coming out the door. She didn’t notice him, and that was fine for now. Instead he just watched her for a minute, before finally speaking. “Meda…”

She didn’t think that they could handle this, she didn’t think that they were going to make it this time, because he had crossed a line. He had crossed the line when he had taken their eight year old little girl and left. She knew where he had gone, he had gone running back to his parents and the world that Andromeda refused to conform to. The muggle world was not somewhere that she was going to lower herself to go. She had already married beneath her, she had almost killed herself trying to give him a baby, and she had lost his son. She had almost bled out when she had lost his son, and she couldn’t just sit there and watch all of this happened again. She wasn’t going to sit here, and bleed out, when he had just taken the most important thing in the world from her, and hadn’t thought to look back. He had taken her baby, and she hadn’t known what was going on until it was to late. Yes her sister was a monster, yes her family was horrible. She knew all of that, but she also knew that the man that she loved, he was that way too. He was one of those monsters. Everyone in her life that she loved was one of them, she was one of them. Andromeda knew that she was one of them, she had been born one of them. She didn’t belong here… She didn’t belong anywhere near here… Tonight, of all nights, she wanted to go home. She wanted to go home… The blast from her wand hit the front window and she heard the glass shatter… She was going to destroy this place if she didn’t stop… But she didn’t want to stop.

She wanted it to burn. She wanted all of it to burn… There wasn’t a single piece of her that wanted to stay here. She didn’t want anything in that house. Her husband had taken her baby away, and her who life had gone with him. That little girl was the only reason that she was still in this house. She was the only reason that she hadn’t gone home years ago. Or maybe not home… But she was the only reason that she hadn’t left Ted. That she hadn’t gotten a flat in London, a nicer flat, a flat that wasn’t down the street from crappy takeout… A flat that she wasn’t worried about anyone finding the two of them together in… She wouldn’t have been so cautious about trying to make sure that they didn’t have a slip up… She wouldn’t have worried about any of that. But she did. She did worry, because it wasn’t just her that she had to think about. She had an eight year old little girl that’s father had made the biggest mistake of his life tonight. Andromeda had threatened to leave a million times. She had threatened to go home, but she had never actually left, and she certainly wouldn’t have up and taken Dora with her when she left in the middle of a fight. You didn’t uproot your child like that. He sure as hell wasn’t going to get away with taking her baby into the muggle world with every intention of staying there. Dora was a halfblood, yes, but the half that wasn’t mud was Black, and she wouldn’t have her in muggle London. She would not be staying there.

Andromeda wanted to scream, but it wouldn’t do any good… She wanted to light the house on fire, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t just Ted’s stuff that it would destroy. It was Dora’s life that she would be effecting then too, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was still her mother. He could take her away, he could try and claim that she wasn’t fit to be her mother, but anyone that knew Andromeda even the littlest bit knew that she loved that little girl. And anyone that she had truly let in knew that she loved her more than she loved herself. Every decision that Andromeda had made since the day that she had found out that she was pregnant with her, had revolved around whether or not she thought that it was going to be good for that baby. That was over nine years ago now. Dora would be nine in March, and she knew that her whole world revolved around that little girl. She knew that. But what Ted had done, taking her away like that, taking her to them. There was not a doubt in anyones’ mind that that Ted’s parents couldn’t stand her. You didn’t have to be a mind reader to know that. She wasn’t good enough. She had never been good enough for their precious son, she was his big mistake, and she knew it. They had never let her forget it, but they were wrong. He hadn’t married beneath him. She had married beneath herself… She had married so far beneath her that her family wouldn’t speak to her. She had had a chance to have everything that she could have ever wanted… And she had chosen him instead. She had made a choice that she had to live with… She had to live with it and there was no taking it back.

The second blast from her wand hit the front door at the same time that she heard her name… Well… Not her name. The name that only one person in the entire world called her, and he wasn’t supposed to be here. He was never here. This was… This was the cottage, her cottage, Ted’s cottage… If he was here there was only one reason, and she knew the reason. The Potters were dead, the Longbottoms had been tortured, Andromeda wasn’t an idiot, she wasn’t a fool, she knew. She knew that he had been involved, that her sister had been involved… The man that she had married had walked out on her tonight, and had taken their daughter with him. And the man that she loved had shown up on the front lawn. The only problem with that, was that if he was here, it was because he wasn’t going to be anymore. Her world was crashing down around her and she wanted to scream. She wanted to scream, and she wanted to break every window in the cottage if it would make her feel better… She didn’t want this, she hadn’t asked for this and he was here. He was here, and she couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t here him say it, because there was something way too final about goodbye. He wasn’t allowed to say goodbye. Turning to look at him she let her shoulders drop, the weight of her entire life crashing down on them. “Rod… You’re here…” It came out a little sad… Verging on defeated… Because here was here, and here meant one thing…

Rodolphus wasn’t going to try to stop what he knew was going to happen. He wasn’t going to try to get out of Azkaban the way many Death Eaters had since the Dark Lord had vanished. He had no plans to claim that he’d been Imperioed, or threatened, or anything of the sort. He was going to Azkaban and he knew it. They had gone after the Longbottoms, and that hadn’t yielded many answers, but it had been worth a try. Now he knew that the aurors would be closing in eventually. He knew it, Bellatrix knew it, Rabastan knew it. Barty would probably be fine, he had kept his true colors secret and if he was safe, they weren’t going to throw him under the Knight bus with them. But he knew that they were closing in, and since his wife knew that they were too, there was no reason for him to be there tonight. No reason for him to wait around with her, when there was someone who didn’t know. Someone that didn’t know that he had no plans to lie, and that they’d made a decision that they couldn’t take back. Andromeda had to know. What had started out as simply shagging his wife’s sister, he had grown to… he supposed he cared about her, that was the best word for it. She was important, and certainly important enough to know that he was about to be in prison, for Salazar knows how long.

He knew that it would be a long time. It would be until the Dark Lord rose again, and he knew that he would eventually. He wasn’t gone, not really, and in the future, he would come back. It could be in a year, or five. But it would happen, and Rodolphus had no doubt about that. When he did, he would know that the most loyal had gone to Azkaban, that they hadn’t lied and said that they were forced. They had suffered in prison for him, and they would be rewarded for that. It wasn’t to say that he was happy to go to Azkaban, because he wasn’t. He would be fine with sliding under the radar, with no one suspicious of him in the slightest. Then he wouldn’t have to say that he’d been Imperioed, he wouldn’t have to act like he didn’t believe in the Dark Lord’s cause, because no one would be looking at him with suspicion. But that wasn’t the case. They would know. They would know, and he was going to Azkaban, because he would not claim to have done this with anything other than his free will. He had chosen it. It was right, it was the way that their world should be. He wouldn’t change any of the choices that he had made, even if he had to spend years in Azkaban because of it. The Dark Lord would come back, and it would all be worth it. He would rise again, and this time, they would be successful. He had no doubt about that.

But he knew that Andromeda wasn’t going to be happy. He didn’t know exactly how she was going to take this. He didn’t know how long he was going to be in Azkaban, and they were… well, they were both married anyway. An affair could keep up for years any other way, and if the Dark Lord had won, then she would be free of Ted Tonks and maybe everything would be different. But he hadn’t won, and that meant that Andromeda was just going to have to go on with her life and figure out what it was that she was going to do. She’d have to decide if she was going to stay with Ted, and Rodolphus thought that she would. That even if she didn’t want to, she had a halfblood daughter to worry about now, and she would stay with her child’s father. He was almost certain of that, particularly since it would be dangerous to do anything else. It was safer for her to be with a Mudblood, in a world where they had won this time around. But he still had to tell her. She would have to figure out where to go from here, and he didn’t have a damn clue if he would be around to see it. At least not for a very long while. He didn’t know what was going on this night, though, what had her outside and upset, but she was about to make it worse. “I’m here.” He thought she knew exactly what that meant, but he knew he’d have to actually say it. Not goodbye, but at least… something.

This was going to be it, she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t keep living like this. Because it was a lie. All of this was a lie, and she was tired of it. She was sick and tired of all of it. And she knew that it wasn’t going to be the same, she knew that she couldn’t just up and go home, because they weren’t going to take her. But she didn’t have to go home. She could disappear in London. She could take Dora, and she could go to the flat, and for just a little while, things were going to be okay. She could do this. she could go home. It wouldn’t be that hard. She thought that she could take on her husband and win if it came down to it. There was no doubt that she made more money, that she was stable in her job and in her income. She could prove that she had been paying for her half of the flat… Though, that probably wouldn’t have worked, because that would have exposed the fact that she was only paying for part of it, and that the rest of it was coming from somewhere else, and ten years of infidelity on her part probably wasn’t going to look too good… But it didn’t matter. None of that mattered. She would figure it out. Sooner or later she was going to figure it out. That was all that she could really let herself focus on. The fact that she was going to have to do something, that she couldn’t go on like this. Because if she kept this up, she was going to explode, and she could risk that. She couldn’t risk what was going to happen to all of them if she really let the fact that she was a Black show. Because she knew that the tendencies were there.

There was a reason that she made a living cutting people open with sharp knives and spells… She had chosen a career that turned those tendencies, into something good. It was the risk that she took, cutting someone open, when she was in a mood like the one that she was in now. A mood where her first instinct was to simply blow the house up, or burn it down, or something as equally destructive… Just to be rid of it. She didn’t want anything to do with any of it. She just wanted it gone. Andromeda wanted this part of her life to be over. This chapter of her life, where all she could see all around her were things falling to pieces. Because that was what this was. This was hell on earth, and there was no way out of this. And it wasn’t just her own decisions that had gotten her here this time around. Sirius was in prison for blowing up people on the streets. And she knew that Rodolphus and Bellatrix, and Rabastan weren’t going to take what had happened with their heads down. Maybe if she was lucky Narcissa could scrape through without something bad happening… She thought that her little sister stood a shot of everything being okay. They had just had Draco after all… Her nephew wasn’t even two yet. There was a chance that they could get out of this unscathed… Keep their heads down, blend in… But she knew better than to think that Rodolphus would do the same.

She was going to lose him too. Eventually she was going to lose him, because no matter how much she loved him, she knew that it wasn’t going to be enough to make him not do something about losing. They had lost, and maybe if things had been different, maybe if the Dark Lord would have won… Maybe things would have been different. And maybe they would have been exactly the same… But she doubted it. If the Dark Lord would have won it would have been safer to leave Ted… She would have been smarter to go home. But she didn’t really have a home, and the one person that she thought that she loved in this world, besides her daughter, well she didn’t know how to love him. She didn’t know what to think about something like that, when all she wanted was to be free of this. To be free of all of this. For one minute she wanted to be Andromeda Black again. She wanted to think that the world was going to work out in some way that she didn’t hate. In some way that she wasn’t going to lose everyone that she had ever cared about before hand… But that wasn’t the way that her life worked. Everyone that she cared about ended up hurt, or dead, and she couldn’t live with herself through that anymore… When she heard her name her heart had nearly shattered. If he was here, that meant that her nightmares weren’t just nightmares anymore. She was losing him too… Andromeda knew as soon as she moved that it was probably a mistake, but she had taken no more than a step when she was moving faster than she though possible and she collided with him. If she was going to lose him, then she wanted to feel him one more time…

It hadn’t gone their way. Rodolphus had always known that there was a chance of that happening. He had known that they might lose—that there was a chance of it, at least, even though it hadn’t been something he’d foreseen happening. He had thought that they were going to get the world that they deserved, the power that they deserved. He had thought that the Dark Lord would be successful, and then this had happened… he didn’t know what in the hell had gone on in the Potter house, but he knew that the Dark Lord couldn’t be gone for good. Rodolphus knew that he was going to come back eventually, and they would be waiting. It didn’t matter how long it took, they would still be waiting. It just so happened that the waiting would have to happen in Azkaban. He knew that. He wasn’t going to hide his loyalty, he wasn’t going to hide who he was. This time around, it hadn’t gone their way. That wouldn’t happen next time. Next time, they would come back stronger, better, more powerful. And those that were the most loyal to the Dark Lord would be the ones that were rewarded more than anyone else. Rodolphus had no doubt about that, and he would wait. He would wait as long as it took. Going to Azkaban had never been apart of the plan, but they would be fine. He, and Rabastan, and Bella… They would emerge more powerful, when the Dark Lord returned.

There were downsides—of course there were bloody downsides. Going to Azkaban would be something he’d avoid if it was possible. If people weren’t suspicious of him, if people weren’t even looking at him as a possible Death Eater, that would be one thing. He’d be fine with that, he’d keep out of Azkaban, and it would work out well. But people would be looking at him, they would have their suspicions, and getting out of that would mean renouncing the Dark Lord, it would mean dealing the lie about the Imperius Curse that was getting so many people out of trouble. He wasn’t going to do that, and that would mean leaving behind plenty. It meant he’d lose the riches and the power he was accustomed to. He’d lose his freedom. He’d lose the woman that he thought he might even love, and that wasn’t his wife. That was why he was here. He was here, because he had started something with Andromeda Tonks, that now needed to be finished. It needed to end. He wasn’t going to say goodbye, he didn’t even think that he was going to end it officially, but this needed to happen. He needed to see her one more time before Azkaban, because he didn’t know when he would be free of the place again, and she had an entire life of her own that she might decide to start living. For the sake of her daughter at least. Maybe.

He wasn’t sure what she was going to do—she wasn’t happy with Ted, not in the way he thought she should be, but Rodolphus also didn’t think that she was going to leave them. Not when she had her daughter to think about, and so whenever he got out of Azkaban again, he knew he might not even think to come to her. She would have a life of her own at that point, and he didn’t know where he’d end up. This truly was a goodbye, even if he didn’t have any intention of actually saying the words. He had just wanted to see her, even though he thought she’d know. She would have heard what was going on, she would know why he was here. She was smart enough to figure it out—smart enough to know that it was only a matter of time now. Rodolphus had no idea what she was going to say. He honestly didn’t know if she was going to try to convince him to do what he could to avoid Azkaban, or if she was just going to accept it. He didn’t know if she’d try to tell him to lie and say he’d been Imperioed, and he didn’t know what he’d say if she asked for that. He had no plans to lie, no plans to avoid what was coming—but if she asked him to, then it would get a bit more complicated. Rodolphus didn’t know what he’d do in that case, but he’d deal with it if it happened. He’d figure it out. For now, all he could focus on was the fact that she was moving, and when she collided with him, he kissed her, because it was the only thing he could think to do.

There was nothing left to do. She didn’t have the fight in her to keep fighting this damn fight anymore. They were stuck. She was stuck. Andromeda knew that she couldn’t really leave. That she wouldn’t. Except that this time… This time she thought that she was that close. That she just might have. Ted had crossed a line the moment that he had taken Dora and left. Andromeda knew that there were plenty of nights that she didn’t come home. She knew that there were times when she was the one that was missing bed times, and storybooks, and everything else. She knew that she was the one that was missing those things. But that didn’t mean that she loved her daughter any less. She was the one that was supporting this family. She was the reason that they could afford the house that he had somehow gifted her… He had given her a wedding present that she had had to pay for. He had given her a daughter that he had just tried to take away from her. And Andromeda thought that Ted had no idea what was going to happen from here out if he thought that he was going to be strong enough to take her daughter away from her. He might have been her father, but she was her mother, and she had blood on her side. Maybe not right now. Maybe not in the grand scheme of things. But there wasn’t a court in the world that wasn’t going to pick the successful, intelligent, gifted surgeon, that loved her daughter, and openly admitted that she had flaws, but could overcome them. Over the hobbyist that didn’t seem to ever really have a career that she could even name. There was no way to support a daughter like that. She thought that he could take her all he wanted, but she would be getting her back, and if he wasn’t careful, he was going to lose them both for good.

Loving him, or at least what she had thought was love in the beginning, had never been everything that she had thought that love was going to be. There had been something safe about him. Something that she had used to escape. But it wasn’t safety that Andromeda wanted. Not really. She wanted something that felt real. Something that made her feel something at all. And she knew. She knew, that the way that she got that, that the man that she did love, was out of her reach. She knew that loving her brother-in-law wasn’t something that was going to make her happy. But it wouldn’t have been love if it didn’t hurt like hell. And loving him… It hurt. It hurt because she knew that she couldn’t have what she wanted. It hurt because she knew that her sister had everything. Her sister had everything and she was wasting it, because she was in love with a man that was worse than Rodolphus when it came to never being able to love her back. The Dark Lord was never going to love her, and she thought that Bella was at least smart enough to know that. He was never going to love her, and yet, she chased him just as blindly… And she knew that someone could say that her loving Rodolphus was the same way. But she didn’t believe that it was. Maybe he didn’t love her the way that she loved him, for all Andromeda knew, he didn’t know what love was at all. But that wasn’t the same. The fact that he cared, and she knew that he cared, was different. She wasn’t blindly following him into war. She wasn’t hoping that one day he would pay her an ounce of attention. Because she already had that. She had his attention, she had some sort of something in return. She loved him. And she mattered to him. And that was enough for her. It was enough to just matter.

Because she didn’t think that she mattered to Ted like that. And she knew that she didn’t love her husband like that. She didn’t love the man that she had married. She loved the man that had appeared in the garden behind her. She loved the man that she hadn’t thought twice before moving towards. And when he kissed her, she kissed him back. Because she wasn’t a fool. Andromeda knew what had happened. She knew that the Dark Lord was gone. She knew that his followers were being rounded up. That they were being put on trial. And she thought that she knew why he was here. He was here, because this was goodbye. He was here, because it was happening, because all of this was happening. And she was losing him. She was going to lose him, and Andromeda didn’t doubt that for a minute. She knew him better than that. He wasn’t going to run from this. He wouldn’t hide. And she didn’t expect him to. She loved him, and she would have given anything for him to stay. For him to run, to hide, and she would have gone with him. They could have disappeared. But that wasn’t the way that the world had worked out. She had an eight-year-old that she had to worry about, and she knew that he wasn’t going to run anyway. She knew that she couldn’t ask that of him, but she wanted to. Merlin did she wish that they could run… Together… Instead she wrapped her arms around his neck, and buried her head in the crook of his shoulder, “When?”

He knew what was coming. And he knew that it was only going to be a matter of time now. They had made their choice. They could have done what it seemed like a lot of the rest of them were doing. They could have claimed to have gotten Imperioed. It was working quite well for everybody else. No one could disprove that, and no one wanted to put someone into Azkaban because they’d been under the Imperius Curse. It was working for those that chose to use that excuse, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He would be turning his back on the Dark Lord, and when he returned, those would be the ones whose loyalty he doubted. Rodolphus would not be among that list. Instead, they’d decided that they were going to do everything they could—even just to find out what someone in the Order might just know. Going after the Longbottoms hadn’t been a hard decision to make. The Dark Lord had thought there had been a prophecy, and now the Potters were dead. The other family he had thought it could be about were the Longbottoms, so there was just that small chance that they knew something. But a part of him had known that they hadn’t. More than likely, they were in the dark completely, but he wanted an excuse to torture someone anyway. They tortured them until it had been too late, until there was no going back. They deserved worse, in his mind.

But that had done just fine. They would never come back from it. They would likely die, or at least stay in some state of mind for their rest of their lives that was permanently impacted by the torture. He thought that would issue a good reminder of what they were capable of, even when they were in Azkaban. Death was so final, and people could start to move on. People could forget. But Alice and Frank Longbottom’s son would always remember what Death Eaters were capable of. That was enough for now, and eventually, the Dark Lord would return. And he would know who had been the most loyal to him. He would reward them when the time came, and they could wait. They would not be the ones disassociating themselves from what happened—they would not be the ones lying to try to save their own skin. He had accepted his fate. He knew that Bellatrix had as well, as had Rabastan. Barty might be a bit luckier. With who his father was, there was a chance that he could remain unscathed. No one really knew what he was, and they had no reason to suspect a Crouch. That was fine by Rodolphus. He wasn’t going to throw him under the Knight Bus just so that he went down with them. It would be good to have someone out of Azkaban, someone that they could actually trust.

Rodolphus had no idea how long it would be until the Dark Lord rose again. There was no way of knowing. But he had accepted his fate nonetheless, and he knew that the only thing left to do was tell Andromeda. What had started off as him trying to get into her knickers had turned into more than that. He didn’t have… feelings, for very many people in his life. It wasn’t how he was hardwired, but he thought that he might love her. That wasn’t something that he could say even about Bella, but for Meda, he thought it was the truth. He wasn’t quite sure he knew what love felt like—hadn’t thought himself capable of it, quite frankly, but he was pretty sure that was what it was. Not that he was going to tell her that now. Now that he was going to be gone, for Salazar knew how long, it would only hurt her to tell her something like that for the first time. She would figure her life out now that he was gone. She would either stay put, with the Mudblood, and their daughter, or she would figure something else out. He had no idea. But he wasn’t going to make it any harder with any heartbreaking farewells. He was just here to tell her. She just needed to know that he was going to be gone… any day now. She buried her head in his shoulder and asked the question that he had been waiting for, and he didn’t answer immediately. “Soon. Tomorrow maybe.” Within the week certainly, but he didn’t think he’d make it that long.

This was something that they couldn't fix. Having Dora was something that Andromeda didn't regret, exactly, but it was a complication. Her daughter made things complicated. Having a halfblood daughter was bad enough, being a blood traitor that had a halfblood daughter was worse. She would take her daughter back though, and Ted would get to see the side of her that she had put in a box for him. Sometimes she thought that her husband forgot just whom it was that he had married. Because she was not going to just roll over and take this sitting down. She was not going to be the one that came out for the worse on this deal. She was the one that was going to take their daughter, and she would go home. She would return to the world that she had told him that she had left behind. Raising Dora in the magical world, instead of in this in between state that they existed in now, it would be good for her. It would be good for both of them. Perhaps it would be cruel, to make him forget them… But she thought that she could do it. A slip of her hand, and they could be erased from his memory. Dora could be told that Daddy had died… She could take care of it.

Perhaps it would be easier, if they simply never existed for him. If the magical world at all had never existed for him. She couldn't kill him. She cared enough about him not to kill him, even if she wanted to strangle him more and more with each breath. He had taken her baby from her, and now she was facing this. Seeing Rodolphus standing in the front garden had been enough for her to know that she was really losing someone tonight. Dora would be taken back. Ted would come home, he would come begging her to forgive him, and she thought that she might. But she might send him packing too. That was up for debate at the moment. Right now, the only man that she wanted to focus on was the one standing in front of her. The one that was telling her goodbye. But she wasn't going to hear it. She wasn't going to hear that he was leaving her. That he was saying goodbye. She could know, with every fiber of her being, what it was that was happening. And she still didn't want to hear it. There was something different about hearing the words.

Words meant a lot, and she thought that there were things that she just didn't want to hear. Things that it would have been terrible to hear him say. Because goodbye was going to sound like forever, and she didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to hear him say goodbye, and walk away from her, like it was the last time that he was ever going to see her. Andromeda wasn't going to believe that she was never going to see him again. It was almost amusing to her. How easily she could think about erasing herself from Ted's memories, of just up and walking away. And the thought that Rodolphus was going to walk away from her tonight, and that she wasn't going to see him again could kill her. That was ironic, and it was tragic, and it was heartbreaking. She had made something of herself as Andromeda Tonks. She had become strong in her own right. She had grown, she had taught herself to be something bigger than what she ever would have been married to Rabastan. But she had done it, while spending seven years in love with someone that wasn't her husband at all.

That was just it, she had fallen in love with him. And it wasn't a fleeting kind of love. It was the kind of love that people wrote epics about. It was the kind of love that she knew was more than anything that she was going to feel again. Because it was impossible, and it was ridiculous, and she thought that it made her sound a little crazy but losing him was going to hurt like hell. She could already feel it, ripping away at her as she held on to him. Andromeda had heard herself ask him, but in the silence of waiting for an answer she wasn't sure that she wanted to know. Soon. Soon was bad enough, but then he had kept talking. Tomorrow… She loved him. She wasn't ready for this. But she knew that it wasn't about her. That none of this was about her. She was the mistress, but she thought that somewhere along the way, maybe she had become the choice. The sister he should have had in his bed all along… She wasn't above thinking that she was better than Bella. In a lot of ways, but maybe for him too. Pulling back just enough so that she could look at him she shook her head softly, "Tomorrow…" that was… unimaginable, really, but tomorrow was tomorrow. "And where does Bella think you are right now?" Because she knew well enough that Ted wasn't coming home tonight… And tomorrow was, after all, tomorrow…

He would never regret what they had done in service of the Dark Lord. His mission was a just one. For too long, the wizarding world had let the scourge of Mudbloods take over… little by little, until they were secure in their position in a world that didn't belong to them. They thought that they deserved to be here-thought that, somehow, they had a right to be. And people accepted that. They seemed to accept them marrying into magical families, and weakening their magic. Weakening their blood. Taking of their world, with Muggle habits, and Muggle ideals, and Muggle inventions. People saw it, and yet still they did nothing. There were those that understood what was going on, those that were still content to do nothing. There were others, who thought that it was good. Thought that their worlds should join like that, that they could learn plenty of Muggleborns, and even from Muggles. And then there was him-there were other Death Eaters, other members of the sacred twenty-eight, that understood that they needed to keep their magic strong. They needed Mudbloods of their world, and back where they belonged. The Dark Lord had understood. His mission would have kept their world strong.

But he had fallen. No one was still exactly sure what had happened, but they did know that he was gone. For now, he was gone, and everything had gone to pieces in his wake. The aurors were closing in, the Order and the wizarding world claimed themselves victorious. The-Boy-Who-Lived, they were calling him. Rodolphus was tempted to find just where they had taken the child, and test that theory out for himself. See if he could face a dark wizard twice and live. Kill the boy for the Dark Lord, and know that the man would be grateful for his loyalty once he returned. But that hadn't been a choice. He didn't know where the baby had been taken, didn't know how to find that out with the amount of time that he had. Instead, they had tried something else out instead. They had gone to the Longbottoms, and they had decided to see just what they knew. It had proven to be… not all that beneficial, as far as information went. But torturing them had done wonders in making him feel better. Torture always did that for him. Hearing someone else's screams could fix any bad mood.

They still had learned nothing from the couple, and now, no one ever would. It was likely that they would never recover, which he thought would be a nice lasting reminder in what the Death Eaters were capable of. He knew that Bella felt the same way, that Rabastan would had accepted their fate. They would go to Azkaban. There was no changing that now. They could fight the aurors, but for what purpose? To take as many of them down with them, that was true. But they needed to be alive when the Dark Lord came back. He would need as many loyal followers as he could get, when plenty were already writing him off as if he was nothing. As if it had been mind control, like they didn't have a choice. That behavior wouldn't be rewarded upon his return, but theirs would. They had gone to Azkaban for him. They had gone to the Longbottoms and stripped away everything that made them human, that made them… anything, and left shells of people in their wake. They had fought until the moment they had been taken to Azkaban, for him.

But there was something that Rodolphus needed to do that had nothing to do with the Dark Lord. It had everything to do with Andromeda Tonks, the woman that he… cared about. Loved, maybe, if he was capable of such things. Bella would go to prison with him, but Meda… they had started something years ago, and now he had to finish it. She couldn't be waiting for him when he had no idea when he would be back, if ever. She had a life out here, with a Mudblood husband, and a halfblood baby to raise. She had made her choices, and for a little while, they had been able to exist amongst their other choices. But now his choice was taking him somewhere else entirely, and this needed to be over. It was over. There wasn't any other alternative. It was already done. "It doesn't matter." And it didn't. He didn't know if his wife was even aware of the fact that he was gone. They knew what was coming, and they were doing what they wanted with the time they had left. She didn't expect him to wait by her side when it happened. They both knew where they were going to end up, whether they were together when the aurors took them or not. "I just thought you should know, before." Otherwise, she'd find out when she read it in the papers, most likely.