Growing up, there were a few things that Nymphadora had always known and relied on from her childhood.

One was that she was not to ask questions about her mother’s family, or about her past, for that matter. It was a forbidden subject that if brought up by her would only make her mother look very distant, and reply that it was not a proper subject, and that she had work that had to be done. The first time she had asked was when she was five, after her cousins and aunts and uncles had left their house. It had been the first time she had ever stopped and thought about why she had never heard anything about the people on her mother’s side. Her father had been showing her a family tree of all of his siblings, after she had shown great interest in her cousin’s school project.

As Ted Tonks pulled out a blank piece of paper, and had designed a rather messy family tree that had only the names of his siblings, and their children, Nymphadora tipped her head to one side. She followed the trace-marks of the lines between them with her index finger, confusion on her face.

“Annabella and Will married… right? So they had family before them that are my family…too.” Her tone was in wonder as she made the connection. It was the age where she began to put things she had always known together, and actually thought about them to find out what they meant.

“That’s right,” Ted said, grinning at his daughter as he reached down to ruffle her short hair. “So you see, your mother and I married, and we had you.” With his quill, he scribbled her long name out, and she crinkled her nose up at its length. Her mother had given her the name, and many-a-times did she attempt to convince them to change it, coming up with multiple possibilities that did not consist of Nymphadora. “See that circle? That’s you.”

She leaned in closer to have a look, and her eyes wandered up to the place where her parents’ names were scribbled. Above and on the side, Ted had names and lines scribbled, with all of the family members she knew very well. As she looked over at her mother’s name, she blinked. “How come mum has no family?” she asked suddenly. Never before had she thought of it that way; to her, family had always meant the cousins, the aunts, and her best friend Evan. But they were all from Ted’s side, and now she could see the blank side of the paper that had Andromeda’s name, and she found herself wondering why her mother had never brought her family over.