Ours to Catch Chapter 11

Hermione fidgeted for what had to be the hundredth time since Andromeda had taken the younger woman into the study. She knew her sisters were just on the other side of the wall, listening spells firmly in place so they could be in on the conversation as well. She had tried to explain in more detail about how neither Narcissa or Bellatrix were actually as evil and uncaring as the tabloids liked to paint them. She reiterated many times over that her sisters were double agents, trying to thwart Riddle from the inside. But the Gryffindor was much too worried for her own good, to even listen to anything Andy was saying.

“So all those horrible things, Neville’s parents, were just some sort of accident or done by other people?” Hermione asked with a slightly higher pitched tone that expressed her disbelief.

Andy had to do her best to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. Her sisters were in her head, her oldest expressing her annoyance about how thick the girl was being. It was taking both her and Cissa trying to calm the woman and prevent her from barging into the room to defend herself. Andy never thought she would have wanted her older sister to manhandle a situation just so they could move on to the juicier parts of being in a relationship. They knew they couldn’t jump straight into having sex, especially given some of the sister’s past reputations, but they were all looking forward to the magic their joining would create.

“Bella has done some things that normal people would deem monstrous, but she had to in order to earn Riddle’s trust and to gain the position she had.” Andy said, just barely restraining herself from rubbing her head from the forming headache she was sure to have later. Cissa better brew her something to help later on. Andy had made the mistake of agreeing that her sister had in fact tortured people and that seemed to be the nail in the coffin as far as Hermione was concerned.

“She could have just not gotten involved with him in the first place.” Hermione had to restrain herself from shouting; she just couldn’t understand how Andy didn’t understand.

She was defending her sister so vigorously that it was actually annoying Hermione. She was so defensive of her older sister and the difficulties she had faced in her life but as far as Hermione was concerned, the woman created her own problems. If Bellatrix was such a nice person, she shouldn’t have followed Riddle in the first place! If she was such a nice person, she shouldn’t have decided that following someone, regardless if she truly believed in him or not, who approved of torture. There were other options, different ways to express her views on what was going on in society. It was almost like Bellatrix chose the easy way out that gave her the biggest chance of living a comfortable life after witnessing her sister getting kicked out of the family.

Even with Narcissa! The woman surely didn’t have to marry Lucious if she didn’t want to. She was an adult at the time she married the man and already knew his beliefs in dealing with the muggleborn ‘problem’. She didn’t even try to convince him the path Riddle was on wasn’t a good one, she just went with whatever he wanted! Hermione was sure woman’s rights, while not as bad as creature rights, likely still weren’t the best in a patriarchy. But as they were the only heirs to the Black family name, a family highly praised in pureblood society, surely she had some flexibility in her life! Hermione felt like they had all taken the easy way out instead of fighting for their beliefs and were all disappointed when things didn’t turn out their way.

“Things were very different back then.” Andy tried again, Hermione was young and from a different world and age. Her youth kept her hopeful, her muggleborn childhood saw more freedoms than a child from pureblood society and the nineties were a lot more forgiving towards female’s than the seventies. There were expectations the sisters had to meet in order to retain their comforts of life and to be able to still do something to fight for a better future. The sisters had walked a fine line between doing what they wanted and doing what they needed and while they did regret some of their choices, none of them would change a thing. She just didn’t understand and Andy was apparently doing a poor job explaining everything to her.

Andy could hear her older sister screaming at her to do a better job of explaining things and to stop making her look so bad. The problem was, much to Bellatrix’s disagreement, she had done some terrible things and apparently their Golden Girl had some issues with it. They had all known it was a possibility that their soul mate would not like the dark things Bella had been forced to do but apparently Bella hadn’t thought it would be so hard to convince her Bella meant no harm. They were Slytherins, they should have known more planning would need to be done; well, she and Narcissa should have known. Bella had planned to ‘seduce’ Hermione from the begging to get her way and in turn Andy and Narcissa had spent most of their time dissuading her.

“That’s no excuse.” Hermione said, almost shouting. Andy had said that several times but no matter what the times were like, there was never an excuse to torture someone. “There is no way I would believe someone who has literally fought tooth and nail for her beliefs and went to prison for it, really didn’t mean to do any of those evil and vile things she’s known for.”

Andy was about to argue her point again, for what was surely at least the tenth time, when she had an idea that may save them a lot of time and effort.

Her daughter was there and was friends with Hermione. Fleur was surely also there, or at least would be soon enough, and both of them would likely be able to convince Hermione that what Andy was saying was the truth. Fleur especially, since it was known Fleur wasn’t one to mince words, would be able to get through to the bookworm. While the two witches hadn’t gotten along that well when Fleur was as Hogwarts for the tournament, Ginny had become friends with Fleur’s younger sister and in time, Hermione had become good pen-pals with Fleur when Hermione needed more information on a topic than what the school provided. It was a bit of information Andy’s daughter hadn’t meant to say, but Andy was very thankful for that information now. Even though Fleur wasn’t one of Hermione’s inner-circle friends, she was still in a much better position than the Black sister’s were.

“Well, as much as I would love to continue this invigoration conversation.” Andy completely ignored the eye roll she received in response, she was being sarcastic and the sassy response was to be expected, “Why don’t I ask if Tonks and Fleur are going to be here for dinner? Perhaps you can join them and they can at least try to assuage some of your worries?” She asked. Andy knew perfectly well that Bella had threaten both women to stay in the manor to make sure if they needed some assistance with Hermione they would be available. Bella was under no illusion that her presence was off putting and while she wished it wasn’t the case, at least Bella knew her niece could help and didn’t kick her out of the manor like she had originally wanted to.

“They’re here?” Hermione asked. She wanted to feel happy that two people she knew were there but obviously there was a lot going on that she didn’t know about. She had no idea how much they knew about the Black sisters and what their involvement in the wars was. In fact, Hermione didn’t even know herself since she was more concerned that Bellatrix may decide being in the same building as a muggleborn was too much to handle.

Andy smiled her normal peaceful smile she was known for; a smile that had taken her years to perfect so as to not seem too similar to her scheming sisters. Just ignore the fact that she schemed just as much as they did.

“I don’t believe so. Fleur likely dragged my daughter someplace to window shop.” She said with a fond smile, her daughter may like shopping herself but Fleur’s version of shopping was a whole other level her daughter was not a fan of. “I can very easily send her a patronus and I can guarantee she will jump at the opportunity to finish their shopping excursion early.” Andy added when she felt her Gryffindor was about to decline the offer so as to not disrupt her daughter’s day.

Hermione thought about it for a few seconds and quickly came to a conclusion: Fleur wouldn’t hold anything back. While Tonks would do her best to be honest, in the end, she wouldn’t go against what her mum wanted. Fleur though, she didn’t give a shite about what any of the Black sister’s would want because, well, Fleur was a French veela who had no desire to hold her tongue. That was something that had always irked Hermione when the veela was at Hogwarts, and a main reason why Hermione hadn’t attempted to befriend her during that time. But it was that very characteristic Hermione wanted the most right now. Fleur would tell her everything without trying to protect others’ secrets; the only secrets she kept were her clans and everyone else’s was fair game. And if Hermione was able to get some firewhisky in, there would be no stopping the blonde witch from telling her everything.

“Actually, I am quite hungry, I think I would love to have a supper with them.” Hermione said, her plan gave her a lot of comfort. Given that this was Black Manor, there was no way there wasn’t any firewhisky in the building and it was likely improbable she wouldn’t be able to have some served to all three of them.

“Perfect, I’ll send them a message now.” Andy said with a smile. Her little witch was likely planning on getting as much information from the veela as possible and that was exactly what she wanted. Hopefully it would take up so much time that the Black sister’s wouldn’t see Hermione again that night. The sister’s themselves had a lot of plotting to do themselves while Fleur eased Hermione’s mind. The sister’s had actually worked with the veela clan long before Fleur was even born, they had made a plan to flee to France and ask for sanctuary with the clan in one of their plans they didn’t follow, they had no fear about what Fleur may or may not say. Andy was more concerned about how pissed her sister’s would be that she hadn’t actually accomplished anything except waste time. She was genuinely concerned as to whether or not she would be able to keep Bella, who didn’t see any problem in acting like they were all in a relationship and skipping all the beginning steps, in check and not scaring Hermione off. She would need Narcissa’s calming help for that to happen.

With a deep breath, Andy summoned her patronus and sent off her message. It wouldn’t take her daughter long to arrive. Hopefully nothing too bad would happen in the next few hours when the drinks started to flow.