oh, how the mighty fall

Andromeda was well-aware of what was expected of her when she'd step off the train and into the whirlwind of entropy that was the House of Black.

She was nearly fifteen, now, and that was, for most of her family, when their future had been decided for them. Her mother had been betrothed at sixteen in a whirlwind romance, in love, happy and so sure, but remained presently unhappily married to her father; her aunt had been signed away at birth, silently resentful of her pre-decided fate but unable to contest what was signed in blood; her older sister had been handed over like a piece of meat, haggled over for the highest price, for the sake of an alliance that could, at any moment, fall through. She was one of the rare few given some sort of choice over her fate, but she knew she'd never be handed the wheel, only give suggestions on the course to set.

Andromeda knew her duty as a daughter of the House of Black and Rosier. That one day, she’d inherit her mother’s abandoned mantle but only if she married as she was bid, and only if she did as she was told. It was easy when she'd lived that life for the past fourteen years.

But she didn’t want to. 

( do this andy, do that andy, oh no andy, you can’t do that, what do you mean you think- you’re A BLACK-)

She’d never voice it aloud - not even to Bellatrix, who was the pinnacle of rebellious teenagehood, and disdained by most of the pureblood society for her brashness - but sometimes, when she looked at the list of things she had to do, never asking if she wanted to, she felt angry . 

Angry enough to burn the world around her down until all that remained was ash tickling her feet. Until the paper was nought but grey, dancing flecks in the wind as fire licked away the impurities it demeaned too sinful to live, leaving behind a clean slate. And then to have the freedom to rewrite the script, pluck from the blackened pages what she deemed ill and concoct her own story, full of her own dreams and ideals and hopes. Her own life, free from this.

She stared down the list of names - Rabastion Lestrange, Evan Rosier, Markus Fawley - and smeared the words with her thumb, rendering it illegible. The ink stained the pretty, pale paper with an ugly black beyond repair.

Good , she thought resentfully and closed it in the pages of her transfiguration book. 

“Andromeda, d'you want to play a game?” Lauren McCool asked, a handful of cards offered with a sincerity that she wouldn’t hear anywhere else this summer. Her friend looked painfully muggle in her strange, colourful clothes, but happier than Andromeda would ever be, and that was what she hated the most if she ever did at all.

There were only a few hours left before she went home and stepped into the shoes of unwelcome responsibility and expected coldness. The train clacked as it sped past the countryside; the green blurring to become the same colour as her tie and the sky a stripe of stormy, shiny silver. Ambition was branded into the skies, as it was burned into the walls of her home, and as it sat like a lump in the back of her throat. She was made of it; they all were, and it ran like poison in their veins.

Andromeda took the cards and settled in her seat, careful to look away from her friend. It did no good to wonder about the impossible. “Alright. Best of three?”

“You’ve made friends, Andy.” Bellatrix demurred, leaning on her arms.

She looked like a wreck; her hair was still in a bedraggled state, falling around her shoulders with all the grace of a crashing tsunami, and she wore a set of worn robes over her wrinkled sleep clothes. She was aware that they were hardly her best set, slightly small with the side-effect that three semesters of school brought. A smear of black ink she’d forgotten to clean off itched the skin of her cheek, and her skin was dull without her usual wash-up routine. 

Bellatrix wouldn’t be caught dead like that in public. Her sister, though, was hardly the judging masses. Andromeda had hesitated over killing ants; at worst, she'd get a blank, wondering stare. Not to mention, if she strolled into her sister’s room washed, dressed and ready, she’d have her guard up before Bellatrix even stepped over the threshold. 

Her sister was soft, maybe more Rosier than was healthy, but she was a Black at the end of the day. 

Her sister squinted at her; she’d started a retreat underneath the covers as if silk and soft things could conceal her. Her tight, telling grip had turned the knuckles of her fingers a pastel, puerile pink that reminded her of pigs to slaughter. Bellatrix honed in on the weakness, like a shark smelling blood. “I haven’t a clue what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.” Bellatrix’s voice lowered into a violent, vicious whisper. She watched revelation slip over Andromeda's pale face with a slow smile. “I know about your little friend.”

Perhaps, if one had not been raised alongside her, you could miss the slight shutter of a frown, the sweat that began to bead on the top corners of her forehead or the pause as Andromeda twisted dark hair around pale fingers. But Bellatrix had known her sister since she came out of her womb and always would know her best.

Which was why, when her sister shook her head again, lips pursed so tightly they were going white, Bellatrix merely raised an eyebrow and said. “So, tell me about her. You’ve never made any friends without me - well, none who weren’t filthy muggles , but they don’t count.”

Bellatrix had ensured that  when she’d set their little park on fire and chased them all away. Her sister had cried herself to sleep for days, but Mother had been pleased. 

But, truthfully, Bellatrix didn’t know who her sister was running off with. It wasn’t another Slytherin, since she’d tortured a very firm answer from every possible candidate. Her little spies, mainly firsties who thought sucking up to a Black would get them extra privileges, hadn’t caught wind of anything either. Her sister was a private person, more likely to take a secret to the grave than tell anyone, including Bellatrix, which meant she’d have to get the answer out of her some other  way.

Either, get her to drop a suitable amount of hints that Bellatrix can narrow it down to a pool of suspects - which, for the narrative, she didn’t  have  - or get her to tell her outright, by pretending that she did know.

Andromeda blinked. “I-what?”

“Are you deaf?” She snorted. Her sister always had been quick on the uptake, really. “I said, tell me about her .”

“Tell you so you can run and spill all my secrets? Hold them over me to make me do what you want?” Her sister sneered, so suddenly unlike her that Bellatrix nearly reeled back, catching herself at the last minute. “No thanks, Bella.”

Bellatrix clicked her tongue. “I never said anything about secrets - why, Andy, my dear sister, have you done something that people would disapprove of?”

She didn't show outwardly, how Bellatrix tracked the quick change of her sister's face; as soft, scared lines hardened into crisp choler, her visage one alike to a furious ice-queen rather than the dainty sister who'd once picked lilies and made colourful crowns. Behind her eyes, grey, stormy and beyond all, livid, was the callousness that Bellatrix had been born with, and that her sister had been born without - or, she mused, maybe not. 

“You don’t know anything.” Andromeda glared at her with cold, angry eyes. Then, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Get out.”

At her words, Bellatrix stopped where she’d been pretending to look over her nail-bed, her lackadaisical attention becoming pointed. Andromeda had never kicked her out before, not even after she’d lit the muggle’s alight then soothed her with soot-stained palms. She’d never been capable of it; not when Bellatrix was everything a Black witch would need to be and her sister veered on the softer side of life. It wasn't too late now, but she'd never catch up with Bellatrix. There were few who could.

“No.” Bellatrix gave a half-suppressed laugh, incredulous in the face of her sister’s over-boiling emotions. “What, did I hurt your feelings? I was only asking -”

“Get out!” Her sister shrieked. A foreign feeling broiled under the cold, vicious enough to burn. She was forced to duck as one of her sister’s plush pillows soared over her head, landing with a thunk by the leg of her dresser. When Bellatrix looked up again, Andromeda was out of bed, her nightgown slipping slightly off her shoulder. It was embroidered with dragons, dancing around each other in faux-white skies.

Bellatrix grinned unpleasantly, an unpleasant pressure rising to the precipice of her chest. It bubbled up her throat and pushed prying fingers into the tight space of her jaw. Her sister could not, would not, inspire this in her - she was Bellatrix fucking Black, prodigal daughter, once capable of claiming the mantle of the house she'd been born into. She'd not bend beneath her sister. “Fine.” She sneered, unkindly. “See you at breakfast, sister.”

She made sure the heavy door slammed behind her on the way out.

Aries was a cute little thing but when you had seen one, you had seen them all. All babies looked similar, especially from families like theirs. Most of her family had the same dark hair and sleek bone structure that ran through Walburga and Cygnus’ blood, gentle enough to be pretty but bold enough to be handsome; yet, Aries would have the bulkier framework of Orion. He was a Black, so he’d be handsome nonetheless, but in the quiet stockiness of her uncle instead. 

Narcissa hadn’t held him, yet. It was odd; when Sirius had been born, she could remember Walburga pushing him eagerly into her arms, near desperate to hand him off to anybody who would say yes. Her mother told her it would be good practice for when Ursa was born. I held Rigel , Narcissa had wanted to say, but second-hand grief had spurned his name from her lips, even when she’d not understood what it meant to love and lose. Then, with Regulus, he’d been passed around like an item at auction - to be admired and awed at and then quietly tucked away when nobody bid.

Currently, Aunt Walburga guarded her youngest with a ferocity previously unseen, preventing fingers from touching and hands from holding him. Such a stark antithesis to how she cared for her other children that Narcissa had wondered if he was ill, or in some sort of danger. But no, he was simply different for her.

Not that her cousins would have known, mind. Sirius and Regulus were much more interested in avoiding their mother and her heavy-handed nature rather than seeking her attention. So was her sister, she thought dryly. 

“Have you seen Ursa, perchance?” Her mother asked, speaking of the devil - or not so, anymore. Whilst she'd been at Hogwarts, something had happened to her sister, and she didn’t need the ability to peer into minds to see it. Not only was her sister relatively well-behaved for her age, though not her intelligence, but she’d also been properly well-mannered at dinners.

“With Regulus, I believe.” Narcissa took her gaze from the baby - or toddler if one was to say more aptly, as the boy grew fast and strong - to her mother. “The library perhaps? She did say it’s been a while since she’d come here, but I’d thought she’d perused the selection completely.” 

And deemed most of it useless, was unadded, but necessary all the same. 

Mother hummed, coming to stand beside her as she peered at the baby. There was an odd twist to her mouth when she pulled back as if she had smelt a foul stench. Her hands tightened around the bars of the crib, pale fingers flexing over dark wood. “A new project of hers. Let her be, then.”

“Mother-” And Narcissa stopped as her mother turned her attention to her again, the glint of the witch-lights catching on the shine of her eyes. She fiddled with the words, trying to find a polite way to ask but coming up empty-handed. “Nevermind.”

Her mother watched her in silence for a moment, then, as if it had not occurred, a warm smile stretched over her face as she held out her arm. “Come, dear. Join Walburga and me in the sitting room.”

The sitting room was adjacent to Aries' tiny, temporary bedroom, with a lavish, green loveseat placed particularly so that Walburga could gaze in every now and then. For the Black family, it was sparsely decorated; where there would be grand silver linings, and great portraits both enchanted and still-life, there was only a long stretch of cream paint. On a modern, mahogany table, a large, lit candelabra overlooked the golden, antique tea set that was pouring out three cups of tea. 

Walburga didn’t smile - her aunt never smiled, to her children nor to her husband - but the corner of her lip curved into a smirk. When Narcissa sat, she spoke with a glint in her eyes. “So, Lucius Malfoy, tell us about him, dear.”

“Uhm,” Narcissa said, elegantly.

“Walburga, please.” Her mother rubbed the bridge of her nose, sighing. She didn't, overtly, look tired, but Narcissa was aware of the tricks used to hide exhaustion. “Must we make everything about marriage?”

Bitterness had never fit her aunt so snugly. “Well, it’s all we can talk about, us being who we are.”

“Well, he’s very charming, and witty.” Narcissa was quick to interrupt; her aunt and mother had a verbal sparring match with every conversation, but she was stuck in a room with them, now. There was no quick, convenient escape unless her sister blew up a cupboard or some sort. “He prefers material matters over theoretical knowledge and he’s very, how does one say, proud.”

As a peacock , she remembered the pink animals that he’d boasted so bravely off. They had been his aunt’s if she was correct, but he’d grown a fondness for them after she’d passed. Narcissa had never had a pet, so she’d been awfully curious about what it was like; and, in turn, he’d never had a sibling, so they’d traded information on the subject. 

“Hm, all men are.” Her mother said, taking a dainty sip of her tea.

“Well, we are agreed on that.” Walburga swirled her own liquid, wrinkling her nose in the face of agreement with her mother. “Why, just the other day, Orion comes up to me and asks where the peonies he bought have gone. I told him they were the wrong ones, and so I threw them out, but he refuses to admit it.”

Her mother was quick to add. "Black men are like that, though, too afraid to own up to their own mistakes."

“Oh,” Narcissa murmured, unsure, almost afraid to eye up the embroidered peonies on her aunt's collar. 

“Don’t mutter, dear. It’s unbecoming. Now, Abraxas, you remember Abraxas, don’t you, Walburga?” Her aunt nodded, her lips taking up a queer, cruel twist. “He was as simple as simple come. Oh, a genius, all agree, and a candid politician to boot, but when it came to women, he was as quick as a corpse. Now, if his son has inherited any more than just his hair colour, it shouldn't be too hard to spin around your finger.”

Narcissa fought not to show any outward surprise, pleasantly surprised at the tidbit. Her mother didn’t talk often of her Hogwarts days, or any days of her youth, unless it was to drop advice that ‘respectable young witches might need’. There was little that wasn’t off-topic for her mother, who thought that any mistake she’d made was one they’d need to prevent by being told about it in excruciating, embarrassing detail, but those seven years seemed to be the one thing she'd never mention. Even before she'd left for Hogwarts, she'd been given only vague advice, left to rely on her sisters to navigate the new landscape. 

Perhaps it was her father, who had initiated her intense dislike. The only photo album of their wedding had been tucked tightly away so that only those who looked for it would find it - or those lucky enough to stumble across its contents. Her mother had been brilliant; dressed in gold and white, smiling in every photo, alight with buoyant happiness that made her thrice as beautiful. Her father had spent every photo had her elbow, kept satisfied by proxy. Her mother’s infectious joy must have spread to the other guests, with even her aunt burgling up a pleasant face for the camera. 

But now, she couldn't remember the last time her mother had looked half as happy, or even somewhat satisfied. Nor could she remember a time her father had talked openly, existed beyond the locked door of his office, in moderate contentment.  

( i loved you, i loved you so much, you were it, my missing piece, and i thought-)

They had been equals, then, Narcissa had known; by the way that her father had let her mother lead and by the way her mother trusted her father to not stain her dress. They had been equals, in love and utterly infatuated. 

“Do you know how?” She asked.

Narcissa would not have a marriage of equals, and she would not have a marriage of misery, either. It would be hers, as much as something she didn’t want could ever be. She refused to be parcelled up and packed away as the Notts had done to the current Lady Malfoy; forgotten as a pale shadow of her past self, whilst her family blossomed in the heat of success and politely pretended she never existed in the first place. 

( why was i not enough for you)

Narcissa Black would make herself happy, no matter the cost.