Brothers 2

Andromeda Learns The Truth

"W-what? What are you doing here? How- is this even possible?" Andromedas fumbles over her words as she stares at Regulus.

"I guess this is happening now." Sirius mumbles behind her. "Drom, uh-"

"You- how is this- what is this?"

"I'm sorry.. but I had to-"

"You had to pretend you died? And you all were in on it?!" Andromeda shouts at us, still staring at us and she seems extremely angry... which is understandable. I was very pissed at Sirius when I first found out.

"Andromeda... it's not-"

"Don't say it's not what it looks like, Everleigh. I thought he was dead. I helped you grieve and now I'm finding out it wasn't even real. You were faking it!"

"No, I wasn't faking it." I say, I feel tears threading to escape my eyes. "I thought he was dead too... for a long time. I just found out not that long ago that he wasn't dead."

"But you kept it a secret when you found out." Andromeda mumbles sadly.

"I had to.. once I heard them out, I understood why they did what they did."

"Who else knows about this?" Andromeda asks us.

"No one else." Regulus adds, his voice sounds weak and he had a voice crack.

"And you two have been pretending this entire time?" Andromeda asks her cousins.

"Please just let us explain Drom... there's a real reason, we didn't just do it to be cruel." Sirius begs her to understand, or at least hear us out.

"I don't even know what to say. I can't process this right now. I thought you were dead, Regulus!" Andromeda shouts again.

"Please Andromeda, can you please let us understand." Regulus begs her. 

"Can you all just give me a minute to process this? I- I still don't even know what to think about this. You were dead. I- your parents think you are dead."

"I know, but it had to be that way..." Regulus says, "Especially my parents." 

"What? I mean, I know your parents are fucked but they're still your parents Regulus." Andromeda says.

"If you'd let me explain, it would make sense." Regulus says, clearly starting to get annoyed with her lecturing. 

"I don't think anything you say will make this any better." Andromeda says as she crosses her arms. 

"Can you at least give us the chance to try and explain?" Sirius asks her gently. She pauses for a moment, taking her time to look at each one of us individually before she says anything. 

"Fine." She mumbles. "But I can't promise it'll change anything." 

I hear Sirius and Regulus both let out a small sigh of relief, like they were holding their breathes this entire time. Scared that she might not even let them explain why they would do something this... cruel.. because let's be honest, if there was no reason for this, it would be extremely cruel. It felt that way when I first figured out he's still alive. The difference is, I already knew about a lot of the shit that was going on with Reggie before hand. I knew how fucked up things were and how scared he was. It was easy for me to understand why the two of them would do this, and it was easy to forgive them because I would've done the same thing Sirius did if Regulus asked me too. I was mostly just relieved that I didn't actually lose him. 

Andromeda moved to sit down on the bed, barely looking at any of us as she did. I knew it would be hard for everyone else to hear the news... and I knew they would be angry but for some reason, I didn't think it would be this hard. The way Andromeda is taking it... it's not exactly how I thought this was going to go.