"When apologizing to a friend, there is a rule. You promise to do things differently next time, and you keep that promise no matter what." - Ging Freecss, Hunter x Hunter
After they'd eaten, with nobody particularly needing to be anywhere, everyone scattered around the manor to kill the day. Sirius and Remus wandered off to set up a game of billiards. Yuna headed for the library, curious to dig into the family's political history. The Blacks had a long one, after all, and if you excluded the current generation, who'd made every wrong call in the book, Sirius included, for actually picking a side, the family had always stayed neutral in the sense that mattered to them: doing whatever kept the Blacks standing. Their records reflected that.
Harriet and Tonks stayed behind in the sitting room. Harriet grabbed two bottles of coke from her stasis pouch and tossed one to Tonks.
"So, Miss Auror. How's work treating you?" Harriet asked, fishing for a conversation.
Tonks stuck her tongue out. "Confidential."
Harriet leaned an elbow on the arm of the couch, feigning deep thought. "Mmh, and if I dropped my voice, grew a beard, and offered you a sherbet lemon?"
"Doesn't work like that." Tonks smirked. "From you I'd expect at least a chocolate frog. Guess I'll have to teach you how to make a bribe, if you're that desperate."
It was strange, honestly. The two of them hadn't spent much time together, and yet they got along easily.
"I already know enough, Miss Auror. Word is you've been staking out a werewolf. Been working him over for a while now, hm?" Harriet asked, deadpan.
Tonks's hair flushed pink at the roots. "Yeah. Good thing this isn't an actual interrogation, you'd be terrifying. And what about you, how's your love life, Miss Potter? Anyone at Hogwarts catch your eye, or are you too busy terrorizing everyone?"
"So, Nymphadora, huh." Harriet grinned, letting her off the hook. "Can't say they missed with that one."
"You..." Tonks looked halfway ready to be offended by the name, then let it go with a sigh. "Yeah, I don't know what my mother was thinking, but that's the one I got stuck with. Call me Tonks like everyone else."
"Not everyone calls you Tonks. I'm calling you Nym." Harriet said, going for originality.
"Nym." Tonks went quiet for a second, something soft crossing her face. "You know, that's what you used to call me. Back when you were tiny."
"Tiny? You knew me?" Harriet's surprise was real. In her head, her parents had gone into hiding right after she was born, cut off from the world.
"Yeah, I met you a handful of times before your parents went into hiding. You started talking really young. I used to hold you whenever they came round, with the grown-ups keeping half an eye on us. I was the one looking after you at the house." Said Tonks.
"And I'm still alive?" Harriet deadpanned.
"Hey! It's not like I was a walking disaster all the time. That started once my metamorphmagus abilities kicked in properly. After that, no way anyone hands a baby under one year old off to me, that's for sure." Tonks looked mildly wounded by her own point.
"So our families knew each other. I had no idea." Harriet said.
"Yeah." Tonks's eyes drifted somewhere past Harriet's shoulder, caught in the memory. "You were this tiny adorable thing, and every time your parents came to visit, you wouldn't let go of me. Cried your eyes out every time you had to leave, I remember that much."
Harriet raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "I don't believe you." She took a sip of her coke, buying herself a second before adding, "But if it makes you happy to believe it, go ahead. I don't have a single memory from back then, obviously."
"Yeah, figured as much." Tonks shrugged, then softened. "For what it's worth, you're family. That's true for me and my parents both."
"Glad to know it." Harriet said it flat, unconvinced. She'd gotten the Dursleys growing up. As far as she could recall, nobody from Tonks's family, or anybody else, had ever tried to reach her. Every non-malicious ward blocking her mail had been down for a while now, and sure, she hadn't gotten around to reading every single letter that had piled up over the years, but she didn't need to. Tonks had already been in her seventh year when Harriet started first year at Hogwarts. She hadn't said a word to her then either.
"I know you don't believe me." Tonks sighed, and something in it said she'd heard fragments of what had actually happened on the growing process of Harriet, here and there. "A lot of your parents' friends wanted to check on you, make sure you were alright. But you were under Dumbledore's protection, and everyone just assumed that meant you were fine."
"I see. I don't hold it against anyone either way, so don't stress over it." Harriet said.
"So, about Remus..." Tonks asked.
"Ah, so that's where you were going with this." Harriet leaned back, arms crossed. "Listen, Nym, I don't hold it against anyone because I don't actually know anyone either. And Remus, I don't like him, but I don't hate him. He only sees my parents when he looks at me, and let me tell you a little secret: I'm not my parents. I don't know them either."
"But he's trying." Tonks picked at the label on her bottle. "He's clumsy about it, sure, but he genuinely worries about you."
"Even Sirius, who spent all that time getting tortured by Dementors, still manages to take the time to get to know me, not just the continuation of my parents." Harriet's tone stayed even, almost bored. "Look, I grew up with a shit childhood, and then I walked into the magical world full of people with opinions on exactly who I'm supposed to be. To be clear, I don't care. As for Remus, he had an entire year as my professor to actually tell me something about himself, introduce himself properly. He didn't. And now that I've miraculously found out he used to be friends with my parents, and he suddenly wants to do right by me specifically, he's decided he's qualified to give me advice on how I should be handling things. Relatively speaking, and considering the guy's a stranger to me, advice from someone who spent his whole life hiding isn't something I want."
"He hasn't hidden his whole life. There are circumstances." Tonks's jaw tightened, defensive on his behalf.
"Yeah, he's got his little furry problem. And? He ran off out of the country the second everything ended, hiding out there cursing his luck. Didn't bother, like most people, to go find Sirius and ask him what actually happened at Azkaban. Comes back acting like he's doing better now, still cursing the same luck." Harriet's voice didn't rise, but it didn't soften either. "You know what, Nym, I like you. So I'll say one more thing. You deserve better than that."
"I'm an adult, thanks. I don't need to be told what to do." Tonks crossed her arms.
"That's just my opinion." Harriet got up and sat down next to her instead, closing the distance rather than pushing from across the room. "It's not like I can force anything on you. But don't try to patch things up between me and him. I don't particularly like him and I don't particularly hate him either, and that's where it stays. And you know, I'm an adult too. With everything I've lived through, there wasn't much choice in the matter. So same as you, I don't need anyone's opinion, especially from someone I consider a loser, telling me what I should do."
At that, Tonks sighed and let the subject drop entirely.
The two of them spent the rest of the afternoon getting to know each other instead, trading stories that had nothing to do with werewolves or dead parents. Tonks turned out to have an entire collection of embarrassing Auror training mishaps, most of them involving her own feet. Harriet gave her nothing in return except a raised eyebrow and the occasional "and you're allowed to carry a wand." In turn, she offered up her own collection of mortifying first-meeting stories, students falling over themselves the moment they recognized her, one memorable idiot asking if she'd become a princess now that she'd saved the prince in the story.
By the time the billiards match wrapped up, Sirius had apparently lost three games straight and was loudly blaming the table. Remus, insufferably smug about it, racked the balls again anyway. Yuna wandered back in with a small stack of books she and Harriet wanted, asking Sirius's permission to keep them.
Dinner came and went easily enough, conversation staying light, everyone having fun, every earlier tension left behind.
After dinner, Harriet and Yuna got ready to head home. Tonks did too, planning to grab a nap before her night shift as an Auror.
But before they left, Sirius pulled Harriet aside for a serious talk, Yuna waiting for her in the sitting room.
Sirius poured her a butterbeer at the bar and grabbed one for himself before speaking.
"Before we start, I want to say something." Sirius took a sip from his mug. "I'm not asking you to be friends with Remus. But he's a mother hen for everyone, and unfortunately, you got tangled up in that, he's putting his trust in the wrong person here. I'm not asking you to be close to him or even like him, that's just who he is."
"Don't worry, I already got that. I'm not planning on holding it against him. Nym and I talked about it earlier." Harriet said.
"Alright, as long as you understand I'm not pushing anything on you just because he's my friend. So, what are your plans for the holidays, Harriet?" Sirius asked.
"Mostly staying home at Potter Manor. There's a New Year's ball with Yuna at the end of it too." Harriet settled onto a stool, getting comfortable. "You could come stay at the manor too, you know, instead of rotting here. The place got its old shine back, but the Dumbledore cult hasn't exactly dissolved, has it? This is basically their headquarters at this point."
Sirius turned his mug in his hands for a moment before answering. "It'll sound stupid, but I'd rather go back once I'm a free man. After a real trial, Harriet." He paused, thumb tracing the rim of the glass. "I didn't kill James and Lily. But thinking back on it, it was my own stupidity that got them killed. I don't even know what I was thinking, making Peter the Secret Keeper. At the time I still thought he was our friend, but he'd clearly switched sides long before that. His animagus form was a rat, for Merlin's sake. I should've seen it coming." He dropped his head. "I'm sorry, Harriet."
The mood soured fast, but even with Sirius pulling himself together, this was a conversation that had to happen eventually.
"So that's what was weighing on you, the thing you absolutely needed to tell me." Harriet said.
"Yeah. Between the physical and mental training, there's a lot I've been turning over in my head, and there are things I need to say and do..." Sirius said.
"So you think you're the only one responsible for that whole disaster." Harriet took a slow sip of her butterbeer. "There were more traitors involved than you, and other circumstances too. You know that already."
"We were aware," Sirius said, bitter. "Doesn't change that switching Secret Keepers was my call. That's what set the whole thing off."
"It wasn't the smartest move, no arguing that. Death Eaters were winning the war back then, you should've planned for what happens if he gets caught." Harriet shrugged. "But what's done is done. What actually matters, Sirius, is that you loved my parents enough to want the best for them. I never got to know them. I love them for giving me life and for trying to protect me, but I don't know them, not really, and I never will."
She took a breath before going on. "You did, though. And you suffered for it a lot more than I have. The only person who gets to forgive you is you. The reason I need to forgive you is something else entirely."
Sirius lifted his head, thrown, and Harriet held his gaze steady.
"I heard what happened. That day wrecked you so badly you couldn't even defend yourself, you just kept shouting that it was your fault they were dead. You ended up in Azkaban not only because the Ministry botched its job, though it did magisterially, but because you were too far gone to answer anyone by the time it mattered. And by the time you came back to yourself, it was already too late." Her jaw tightened, just slightly. "It says something, how much you loved my parents, that you forgot everything else and just shut down completely. I'm angry you didn't think of me then. That you didn't find your footing again before I got handed off to Dumbledore's little cult. But I forgive you now."
"So I'm counting on you, Sirius." Harriet said, a small, reassured smile tugging at her mouth. "Do better next time."
Sirius wiped roughly at his face with the back of his hand, and for once didn't try to hide it. "I will. I promise, Harriet."
Sirius couldn't hold it back after that, crying like a child while Harriet patted his shoulder like an adult, even as a few tears of her own slipped free. It didn't change the fact that Sirius wouldn't be joining her at Potter Manor for now, but at least things were a little clearer between them, and the things that needed saying had finally been said.