The Secret Keeper of the Tonks homestead, Nymphadora Tonks, waddled to the forest with a baby in hand. The sharp crack signalling Diana's arrival and the prompt Patronus that slithered in through the gate led Tonks into a haste, pulling the blue-haired baby from his crib and achingly making her way to the arrived girl.

"Diana, I'm so happy you're still alive!"

Though they were not the most delicate words of greeting, they were good enough for the Riddle girl. She took in the comfortingly familiar pink hair, her still-swollen belly and the little newborn in her arms, swaddled in a blanket the same shade of blue as his hair.

They embraced, careful not to squish the baby in the process.

"This is Teddy Lupin," said Tonks, and Diana smiled at the little baby and gave him her index finger to grip with his tiny fingers. Though he was still so new, he gave her a little toothless smile back, and she melted, which was not something she was particularly accustomed to.

"Hi, Teddy," she cooed, and they set off to the house that neither of them could see. After a moment, Tonks pulled out her wand and mumbled something and a quaint cottage appeared, painfully familiar.

"This is where I landed the night we got attacked in the sky," she mumbled. She had been unconscious, but she knew it was the place. That night, the night Mad-Eye died, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

"You are correct," Tonks said with a bright smile. "My dad was here, too, but I don't know if you've heard---"

"I heard on Potterwatch," said Diana gently. Tonks gave her a watery smile.

"Well, now you can see the place when you're conscious!"

It was quaint and tidy, with simple couches and moving pictures of a girl with neon hair and a family of three. In each picture, the woman looked painfully like Bellatrix Lestrange, if Bellatrix was less cruel and smiled more often.

"Oh, dear, hello," said a voice. Andromeda Tonks appeared in the living room doorway, her heavy-lidded eyes surprised, but kind. It was odd to see such gentle expressions on a face so similar to Bellatrix's.

"Hello, Mrs. Tonks," she said politely. Calling her 'Mrs.' felt odd, for Diana rarely tolerated using titles.

"I'll be upstairs in the nursery," said Tonks hastily, and she walked out with the cooing baby. Andromeda offered Diana a cup of tea and she took obligingly, and they sat across from each other on opposite comfy chairs.

"I don't mean to intrude," said Diana, "but I think you have some information that could help me."

Andromeda's smile seemed to turn wary, though just slightly.

"Well, dear, I'd like to help with anything I can."

Diana smiled.

"I've recently stumbled across some... information... that might lead me to believe you know something of my mother's whereabouts."

Andromeda's smile tightened to one reminiscent of hidden panic. She was troubled.

"I'm sorry---your mother? I don't---"

"You do," said Diana, though not unkindly. "I know you're trying to keep your promise of secrecy, but my mother wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to stay hidden if she did not want to be found."

Diana stumbled, before adding quietly, "and I think it's time to find her now."

"Your mother was a brilliant woman," said Andromeda, "she has reasons, as do you, and she had secrets, as do you. There are things you don't know----"

"Then tell me," said Diana. "Please."

Andromeda watched her with conflicted eyes, finally looking down toward her lap.

"I was never supposed to tell," she said. "I made a promise. She told me it was for your own safety."

Diana's heart thumped loudly, but she waited patiently for Andromeda.

"She wants to be found," said Diana encouragingly. "Her diary, the dreams; she's been telling me all of this time that I need to find her." Then she added in one last attempt, "It's time to bring her home."

With watery eyes, the two watched each other in silence, their eyes full of words they have never said aloud.

Please, Diana's said, Please help me.

Andromeda spoke the words her eyes were saying.

"I'll help you."

In a fluid motion, almost dream-like, Andromeda waved her wand in a sort of path, and out came a gas in the same wispy gray as the memories one would place in a Pensieve. The gas melded into a scene of hues and shadows, all pictured in the same blue-gray: three figures inside a small, dank room. One was laying on a surface, maybe a cot or a table, and one was next to her and the other stood back. The one on the table was screaming, though it just came out as a whisper from the gas-formed scene.

"My sister contacted me that day," said Andromeda, her eyes on the scene before them. "I hadn't spoken to her in decades, and I would've told her to shove it, but she was desperate. She told me she needed me to take her place in something, for she couldn't get away from Lucius."

The scene seemed to grow until it took up the entire space between them above the coffee table. The faces were blank and muddled, but it was definitely two women and another larger figure, a man.

"She said Vera Beauregard, the wife of You-Know-Who, was due to be giving birth that night. She said that Vera had a plan that involved getting you away from You-Know-Who, getting you to safety, for she was worried about Tom hurting you because of your destiny to destroy him."

Diana could not breathe, and she could not do anything but keep her eyes on the scene patiently for Andromeda to continue.

The scene changed, and two of the figures vanished until it was just the one on the table, groaning and moaning in pain. It was similar to a dream she had awhile ago, the same dark room, the same pained woman. And then the door opened, and she could only see a sliver of the face.

"And we did. We took you--she told us to leave her, to leave her to deal with Him. She--she was dying," said Andromeda in a faint whisper. "She was sick, but she begged us to leave..."

"Andromeda, where was this?" said Diana urgently and quietly. "Please--you keep saying 'us,' and there was a third figure in the picture. Who was it? Who helped you?"

Andromeda seemed to choke on her own words, and her eyes fell to the necklace that hung from Diana's neck.

Diana's pulse beat through her skin, and she was so close, so close that she could taste it---

"She handed that to me before we left," she said. "Told me to give it to you, to make sure you always had it. She said it was important..."

"Please, Andromeda," she begged in a pained whisper. "Please tell me."

Andromeda gulped, and her eyes shown with fear and sadness for the girl in front of her, for the mother that she helped all those years ago. It was like the words were trying to claw themselves from her eyes, to become free.

Andromeda looked away as if she could not bare it any longer.

"We met in Hogsmeade, he and I," she said, and Diana didn't breathe. She waited. "He knew where we were going, so he Apparated us to the place---it was a village called Broceliande, and it was supposed to be at the church."

She paused, and Diana could not make herself urge the woman forward.

"There was no one there when we went inside, and he sent a Patronus that leapt through a door. We got one back, an eagle, that showed us through the door and down these stairs and into this huge, beautiful room in the basement. It showed us through it and through a door on the other side, and there was Vera, alone, crying and in so much pain."

Diana had been there. She had been just feet away from the place where she was born, the place where her mother seemed to have vanished. She could've reached out and touched it.

"Who helped you?" said Diana. "Who was it?"

Andromeda's eyes welled even more.

"Aberforth Dumbledore," she said quietly, and the wind was knocked from Diana's lungs. "We went inside, we--we helped her through labor, we held you--"

She was growing slightly frantic, though she took a breath to calm down.

"She gave us that necklace that you wear, told us to leave her. She said Tom would be back soon, that he would kill us. She loved him so much, but she loved you as if you were apart of her..."

"Where is she now, Andromeda?"

"I had a dream the next night, a--a message. It showed me where she was now, where he had laid her."

It was so, so silent, and the gas between them of silver and blue changed and swirled before their eyes and finally settled, now a new picture. A woman in a glass coffin, a morbid likelihood of the Muggle tale, Sleeping Beauty. She was still, her eyes closed, and the walls around her were a dark stone.

The next words that came out of Andromeda's mouth were like a storm, it ravaged inside of Diana's brain like whirlwind. It was the answer, finally, the answer to everything, but it was so much---

"Tom laid her in the Chamber of Secrets," she said. "She has been asleep for nearly eighteen years in the Chamber. It's time for you to wake her."