A/N: References in the previous chapter were made to Little Red Riding Hood and Feegle vocabulary. Twice. Each.

Andrea Tonks, formerly known as Andromeda Black, was a piece of work.

Lily and Severus both thought the piece in question might be the Venus de Milo. What they differed on was whether this was pre or post arm loss.

There was no question that Andromeda Tonks was beautiful. Lily hadn't ever seen her, since the older witch was years older than her two younger sisters, but tales of her beauty - and of Ted Tonks being even more beautiful - were widespread in Hogwarts. Their eloping had been The Scandal of 1970 - a 1970 that had lasted far longer than twelve months.

Lily was jealous.

Here she was, all tongue tied in the presence of an older witch that looked much better than she could ever hope to be, and Severus was talking to her like he talked to anyone else.

Correction, he was talking to her like he talked to Lily herself, not the way he talked to most people. Most people he didn't talk to. (Why talk when sneering was available as a form of communication?)

It wasn't fair. Severus was a boy. Boys had hormones and things. Proper boy behaviour when they saw a pretty woman was to swoon and knot their tongue.

Lily wondered if she should check if someone had magicked a penis onto her.

Severus would have scoffed at her thoughts. He would have pointed out that a penis didn't contain any hormones and then gone into physiological details of what a gender changing Hex would have to accomplish...

"I'll be back," said Andromeda suddenly as she left their pub table. Lily could hear her stilettos clipclopping into the distance.

So. Severus and her were alone again. He was giving her an inscrutable look. This was rather annoying, since she thought she had categorized all his looks, from Angry-At-The-World to Angry-At-The-Universe to Oh-Merlin-Oh-Merlin-This-Potion-Is-Going-To-Explode. Then she had the brilliant idea to form a new category called Inscrutable and labelled his current Look with it. All was well.

"You were rather quiet," he commented.

Lily considered this. Perhaps some honesty was in order. "She's very pretty."

He raised his eyebrows. "Unlike you, I have practice being around beautiful women."

This didn't make Lily feel any better. He was referring to Bellatrix, of course.

"She'll be back," he explained. "She has to make a phone call to her man."

"Her man? She called him that?"

"I presume Ted is of the male persuasion and belongs to her, like she belongs to him."

"Yes, but -" Lily's voice trailed off. She didn't even feel up to a good banter.

Severus gave her a curious look before appearing to have an internal conversation with himself.

"I find it useful," he said after a while, "when I meet new people, to determine their weak points."

Lily perked up, interested. Andromeda had a flaw? What kind of flaw? Hmmmm. Maybe it was ingrown toenails. That must be why she wore shoes instead of sandals in the summer. Mighty fine shoes, certainly, but the finery was merely a disguise intended to cover the shoes' true purpose of hiding ingrown toenails.

Lily felt better already. Sev always had a way with words.

"I looked into her eyes when we met her. She is -" he halted, floundering for words. "- sad."

"Sad?" asked Lily in disbelief. Though she did suppose ingrown toenails would make you sad. Her own left breast was smaller than her right breast and that made her sad. When she remembered to think about it.

"She had to leave behind everything she knew, the world she grew up in, and go into hiding."

Lily thought about this. She almost said something, but then remembered that that statement could have been applied to Severus as well. And while he didn't seem sad - perhaps he was?

Severus was sad?

She didn't think he would care about ingrown toenails if he had them.

She would have to investigate his sadness and if she could do anything about it. Maybe then he'd forgive her.

"You two look cozy," said a returning Andromeda as she sat down.

Even Lily raised her eyebrows at that. Andromeda chuckled, being the only one who could also see that Severus had raised a solitary brow simultaneously.

"Ted's caught in traffic."

Lily decided that this was code for Andromeda's husband being in the middle of a drug deal. It meant that she wouldn't be flustered when Mr Walking-Sex-On-A-Stick showed up. Drug traffickers weren't sexy. It would be like drooling over a Kray twin.

With her new found confidence, she finally felt capable of asking something other than "How are you?"

"Do you have any idea how Bella killed Cygnus?" she asked.

Andromeda looked momentarily non-plussed at the bluntness of the question, but shook it off.

"Can you tell me what happened?" asked the older witch.

Lily glanced at Severus. He responded with a look she readily categorized as You're-The-Bloody-Witness-You-Tell-It.

She began to explain.

Bella's stay at Azkaban was not in line with her expectations. She was supposed to be going mad right now recalling her worst memories. (And yes, she had a choice collection of them.) Instead she was going mad trying to work out what the Dementors were up to. Perhaps it was a new form of psychological torture?

Soon after lunchtime (more shepherd's pie), one of the wraiths had turned up at her cell and told her she was moving to a new room. It seemed unsure of how to behave. But it still smelled apalling, and Bella had thrown up. This seemed much more in line with expected happenings and both human and Dementor were able to relax as a result.

As Bella followed Stinky to the new room, she noticed that there was a lot of singing in the cells. She hadn't quite realized there were so many women in Azkaban, or that prisoners could sing that badly. There was also a lot of wailing and groaning, so she couldn't make out the lyrics.

She was jarred out of her musings by their entering an altogether different part of the prison. It smelt... musty and unused, like an old castle that hadn't seen a human for three centuries and wasn't quite sure what to do with one.

Stinky came to a stop at a mighty oaken door and pulled a rope hanging next to it. Bella thought nothing of the fact that the rope was hanging in midair, unattached to anything.

The door opened with a small creak.

Stinky looked flustered. "Bugger - oiled it way too much," it - he? - she? - muttered.

Bella entered the room and gasped. It was ... the stuff of nightmares. She hoped this wasn't meant for her.

The bed looked incredibly comfortable - she had no quarrel with that.

The room was a riot of pink and red and yellow and lace. The walls were pink and dotted with bright red hearts. Cute badgers cavorted around, engaging in lewd and unconsciable behaviour, like cuddling, nosing, kissing sans tongue, and waltzing. On the yellow-gold ceiling were adorable little ponies.

"Do you hate it?" asked Stinky anxiously.

A stunned Bellatrix nodded wordlessly.

"Oh good. We took it from your worst memories. Had to keep up standards somehow."

Bellatrix nodded again. She could see how they had come up with the torture room. It looked like Narcissa's when she was five, but with an extra dose of Hufflepuff. One girl's Awww was another girl's Arrggghhhh!

Then she noticed that some of the ponies on the ceiling were actually playful little lion cubs and she had to resist the urge to scream.

One thing was clear - if she ever got out of this place, she wasn't telling anyone about it. 'They gave me a comfortable bed' would be adequate. No need to mention the extras.

"You'll be sleeping here from now on," explained Stinky unnecessarily.

As they left the room, the little ponies on the ceiling whinnied goodbye. Bella was fortunate not to see the lions and badgers wave excitedly at her retreating back.

Andromeda looked ashen when Lily finished her eye witness account.

"Excuse me," she mumbled as she got up and headed to the bar. Lily moved to follow, but Severus grabbed her shoulder.

"She's going to get a drink."

Lily reluctantly obeyed. But she did turn around to get a view of the front of the pub. Sure enough, Andromeda was motioning to the barman to get her what looked like a bottle of his finest. She put it to her lips and began chugging it, causing conversation in the pub to slowly cease. A beautiful women drinking like a gallows-headed pirate would do that to any pub.

"What's she drinking?" whispered Lily.

"Not sure," answered Severus, "but I would not be selling her liver insurance in a hurry."

There was scattered applause in the pub as Andromeda returned to their seats. She was holding the half-full bottle of Dasvidanya Comrade Liver with her. She offered it to the kids, who politely refused. Severus refused it because he didn't want to follow his father's footsteps. Lily refused it because Severus did.

Andromeda's voice wasn't slurred. Only Severus spotted the slight slowing down of her words as she put in more effort to keep them steady and controlled.

"I think Bellatrix cast a Dark Witchcraft protective charm on herself," stated Mrs Tonks.

Lily glanced at Severus, and then turned to look at him when she saw that his eyes were wide. And since it couldn't have been the Dark aspect of it which had surprised him ...

"Witchcraft?" queried Lily.

"Yes," asserted Andromeda before chugging down another mouthful of Die Liver Die. She turned to yell at the barman for another plate of chips.

"Proper witchcraft?" asked Severus, leaning forward. "Spells I would not be able to cast?"

Lily blinked. There was witch-only magic?

"Yes," replied Andromeda with a wry smile, "spells you would not be able to cast. Unless you have ovaries hidden somewhere."

Now Lily had to ask. "There's stuff only women can do?"

"Course there is," Severus pointed out, "it's called pregnancy." He paused. "And not having to worry about getting kneed in the g-"

Andromeda broke in before he could finish. "Ever wondered what why Hogwarts is called a school of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Witchcraft exists, but most European Ministries all but banned it in the 1200s to 1500s. It consists of spells - Light, Dark, Grey - that only women can do. Some can only be performed by virgins, others only by mothers, and yet others only by witches beyond child bearing age."

"A coven!" breathed Lily, amazed.

"Quite," agreed Andromeda, "A maid, mother, and crone - the most powerful triad of witches."

Severus was still listening avidly, though his body language showed few signs of it.

"What of Wizardry then? Is it spells that only men can do?"

"I honestly do not know," replied Andromeda. "But if there were spells only wizards could do, I'm sure they would constantly remind us of it. So I would presume that Wizardry is just another name for Magic."

"So the Ministries banned Witchcraft because they're a bunch of chauvinist wankers?" asked Lily.

"Women wank too," Severus pointed out.

"Fine. Chauvinist tossers."

Severus graciously conceded the corrected point.

"I don't believe it!" yelled a fuming Lily. "You're saying the Ministries banned an entire branch of magic just because they were a bunch of old men who couldn't do it? What about the women? Some of the spells could have protected us!"

"Protected us women from -"

"Oh," said Lily quietly. Men.

Silence.

"It is peculiar," commented Andromeda, "that the status of witches in the days of Rowena and Helga was higher than it is today."

The chips arrived, and the trio dug in. Andromeda seemed in most need of comfort food.

"You said Bella cast a protective witchcraft charm on herself," said Severus, returning the conversation to its original track. "Do you know which one?"

"I'd have to look it up to know what it was called. But from what you said of my father's injuries." She halted so she could take another sip of Accio Cirrhosis. "There is one that can be used by women who've been raped, so that they don't get raped a second time."

Lily was stunned. Bella had been raped?

Severus looked resigned, and then surprised when he realized that the chip held in his forefingers had been turned to mush.

"When the second rapist inserted his penis into her," stated Andromeda dispassionately, "it would be cursed with an Aduro Hex. Internal burning, very painful." She looked grim, though a tad pleased. "Very painful. And then the Aduro would spread to the rest of his body."

More silence.

"Cygnus deserved it," stated Severus.

Lily didn't know what to think. She, after all, was the only one of the three who had actually seen what had happened to Cygnus, and she didn't think anyone deserved to die the way he did. Even someone who raped his own daughter ... then again, she didn't know what to think any more. Crime and Punishment was something she would have to think more about, and she suspected that no amount of thinking would be adequate.

"It's a Dark Protection Spell obviously," continued Andromeda. "So not only did my sister commit the cardinal sin of killing the head of an Old Family, she also did it using Dark Magic. Using Dark Witchcraft. If this ever came to a public trial before the Wizengamot, she wouldn't have a chance."

"Fuck," said Severus.

"Don't fucking swear," chided Andromeda. "Sorry, been living with Ted too long."

Bella stood in the middle of a large field. It looked like a Quidditch pitch, except there were rectangles at each end instead of three circles.

She hadn't remembered seeing Large Open Spaces For The Benefit And Leisure Of Ye Prisoners in the Azkaban travel brochures. There was a distinct feeling that she had been fast-tracked in the prison motto of 'Abandon Sanity All Ye Who Enter Here'.

Well. If she had already gone mad, there was only one thing she could do. Lie back and enjoy it...

She flumped to the ground and lay down.

She had barely begun the process of enjoying it when a poolful of water completely drenched her.

"HEY!"

"Be quiet, Locust."

The voice was harsh and demanded obedience. The accompanying stench demanded her lunch.

A sole Dementor stood in front of her. He was dressed differently, in robes - no, a cloak - of tanned multi-coloured leather. He was completely hooded, like the other Dementors, but

"My name is Master Pew," he stated.

Bella's nose thought this was appropriate, but her mouth refused to voice this notion, which her brain thought was an excellent idea.

"Here is a wand," stated Master Pew, holding out a foot long piece of ash wood.

Bella grasped it eagerly. "Thank you!" she exclaimed, reflexively polite in the presence of someone who obviously had more magic than her. (Her few interactions with Susan had been most educational in the development of this reflex.)

Master Pew's eyes - or whatever substituted for such - glowed.

"Thank you, Master Pew," she clarified hurriedly.

"Feel free to try and get off the island with this wand. You will not succeed."

Bella didn't believe him, but restrained herself to only casting a Bubblehead charm for the moment. Her nostrils duly sang Kumbaya as a result.

"What is its core?"

"The intestines of a human while it was digesting a rat."

Bella grimaced. "That would not yield a functioning wand core." She paused. "Even if the human was Pureblood." She paused again. "Would it?"

"Your question was poorly phrased."

"What is its core, Master Pew?"

"The heartstring of a Hungarian Horntail. It is good that you learn quickly, Locust. Your training will require it."

"Training?" asked Bella, confused.

"Do you wish to keep your wand? Good. Then you will train, Locust."