1920…
The spring sunshine is warm on her face as she dances across the piazza, the breeze blowing her glossy black curls over her little face. She scatters the flock of pigeons, nibbling like dainty old ladies at the bread-crumbs thrown by tourists, and they rise, clucking in protest at this intrusion, into the cornflower-blue sky. A slim, fair-haired young Englishwoman, a baby in her arms, and a tall, middle-aged, black-haired soldier – he looks like one with his well-built figure, stern, sad face and world-weary eyes – follow the little girl at a more sedate pace.
"I do wish," Arcturus Black tells his wife coldly, "That I could prevail upon you to instruct your daughter of the meaning of the words restraint and refinement." His eyes flicker impatiently over her face with its smooth, robust MacMillan features and he adds cuttingly, "Though of course those words must be alien to a woman of your breeding."
Melania is far too used to his words to even take offense. Instead she runs her fingers gently over baby Orion's face, murmuring timidly, "It's her fifth birthday – naturally she's excited."
"There are permissible limits for excitement," he says impatiently, pulling out his tourist's map of Rome. "She must never forget the dignity she was born to as a Black girl. Another thing – I really think it's high time you stop referring to her as Lu. She's quite outgrown childish nicknames – she must know that Lucretia is a name to be proud of." Aloud he cries to the little girl swirling on a spot in the middle of the piazza, "Lucretia Ginevra Black! Come here this instant!"
At first Lu doesn't realize that he's calling her – it takes a moment and then her mother's sweet cry, "Lucretia, your Father wants you!" before she understands and skips back to her parents.
"What have you to say for yourself, Miss Black?" Arcturus asks sharply, taking in her disheveled appearance with critical eyes. "You look like a vagrant."
Lu stares calmly up at her father before turning to her mother. "Mummy, why were the pigeons so afraid of me? I wouldn't have hurt them, so why did they fly away? Can we have a pastry at the bakery? It's my birthday."
"I know, dearest," her mother says fondly, "But your father has something to say to you. Arcturus?"
"I was going to give you a present," he says harshly, "But you are a very insolent little girl, I see, and now I don't think you deserve any presents. I picked a special gift for your fifth birthday, but now I won't give it to you." Lu's face expresses no particular sorrow for her conduct or for the consequence either – his presents usually consist of books on ladylike etiquette, embroidery kits and diaries, in short, items that though he considers ideal gifts for little girls hold no appeal for her.
"Oh no, Arcturus!" her mother intercedes on her behalf, knowing full well that Arcturus wants to be begged to reveal his special gift. "Lucretia is terribly sorry for her behavior – she won't do that again. Won't you, sweetums?"
"Oh no, of course not, Mummy," Lu says dutifully.
Arcturus smiles in gratification. "Well then," he says, benignly beaming down upon her, "Now that I see that you are truly apologetic I see no reason to deny you the gift. If you promise to be a good little girl I shall always love you and give you pretty presents. Won't that be nice?"
Dutifully Lu says yes, but she doesn't care. It doesn't matter whether Father loves her or not – she rarely seems him. This trip in Rome is the first time in her life that she's seen him every single day for a whole week.
"This," Arcturus says dramatically, producing a small brown package, "Was your Great-Grandmother Ursula Flint's. It passed down to her oldest child, your Grandfather Sirius, and then to me and now, my dear, it is yours."
Lu stares blankly – and uninterestedly – at the package. "Open it," her mother hisses, pinching her. And so, slowly – wary of her father's eye on her and the need to act what mother calls 'decorous', though she doesn't know the meaning of the word 'zactly – she does. At the end she's left with a long-teethed, slender silver filigree comb.
"Thank you," she says, wondering why she needs another new brush.
"It's not a brush," Melania says quickly, interpreting the puzzled look on her face, "It's an ornament to wear in your hair when you go to balls and things when you're older." And then she gushes to the husband she loathes, "You have such excellent taste in birthday gifts, Arcturus, it'll look lovely with her dark hair."
"Anything for my little Black Princess," he smiles, patting her head. "It's a good thing, isn't it, that she takes so after her father's side of the family? I don't think I'd ever be able to give her my grandmother's treasures if she turned out as coarse and raw-boned as you, my love."
Melania says nothing, only hands sleeping Orion to her husband while she pins up the comb in her daughter's hair. For a moment nothing but anger fills her heart and her fingers are harsh as she digs the pins into Lu's hair, into Lu's lovely, ever-so-blackhair.
1966…
The walls of Lucretia Prewett's little dressing room, just off the bedroom, are all mirrors. In the first flush of a girl's excitement at finally, finally growing up, at being old enough to wear ballgowns and stay up late for the dancing and the revelry just like her cousins fourteen-year-old Molly twirls in her mother's sanctum. "I feel like I have wings!" she gushes, her unbound hair flying loosely around her, "I feel like I can do anything!"
Lucretia can't help but smile at the excitement that makes her little girl's – because Molly will always be her Mum's little girl – cheeks glow so brightly, at the sparkle in her pale-blue eyes and most of all, at her infectious smile. But, in her typical reserved fashion, ingrained into her by her father, she only says, with more severity than she meant to, "Do behave your age, Maria Melania."
Molly winces at the use of her full name. She's never been Maria Melania to anyone in her life – it's too much like the sort of name you use for eccentric, old spinster aunts who have nothing to do in life but read Plato and keep a pack of cats. Molly, occasionally Moll – but she hates that, gangsters have never particularly appealed to her – is what she goes by. "Yes, Mum," she says dutifully, patting her tulle gown she's been corseted into. Still it is quite lovely, well worth the pain of the whalebone corset that cuts her ribs, the rose-pink blending so beautifully into the milk-white in the skirt.
"Pink isn't your color," Lucretia sighs critically, eying Molly's rust-red – Prewett red, which though an improvement on the bright red of the fast-breeding Weasleys, isn't all that pretty – hair. The comb she herself toys with, Ursula Flint's, long-teeth, silver filigree, was made for smooth, silken ebony-black waves, not a tangled mane of red. "But then you're complexion and features simply won't suit white – you're like me in that way. And incidentally, my dear, it wouldn't hurt if you were to grow a little taller – do want to remain a midget the way you are now? Don't you want a figure like mine? You've already gained some weight; your figure is far too voluptuous for a young girl. Why when I was your age I was like a willow tree in spring, slender as a reed, graceful like a linnet…" Molly's moon-like face crumples and she looks silently down at herself, hating her body.
"Well I think both my girls look lovely," Ignatius says fondly, entering the dressing room and throwing his arm playfully around his wife, "My dark willow tree and my little rose bush."
Lucretia pushes him off lightly, "You rogue, I've long ceased to be a willow tree. It's time for our little rose bush to blossom into a tree."
"I love her just the way she is," Ignatius smiles, "She'll be the prettiest debutante at our ball, won't she? Why with your marvelous Black complexion and my splendid hair…"
"Run along now," Lucretia says, shoving him out. "I won't have you spoil our mother-daughter bonding session." She locks the door and takes a quick look at herself in the mirror-walls that surround her. A stern, sad face with world-weary eyes, a face almost stoic-like in its soldiery stares impassively back at her. She looks uncannily like the father she's spent most of her life loathing. And she can't help but wonder, quickly reviewing her conversation with Molly, whether she's turned into him. No, no I haven't – I don't take pleasure the way he used to in demeaning other people. I was just giving Molly some good sound advice.
But then unwittingly Molly's crumpling face rises before her eyes and its guilt that makes her say, far more gently than she normally would, "Aside from your plumpness – we'll have to work on that, you're old enough now to be thinking about boys and maintaining your figure –"
And there she goes again, naught to be done. It's her father's legacy.