Title: Children of the Night
Author Name: Aisa
Rating T
Genre: Drama, General
Era: Marauder's Era and earlier
Main Characters: The Black Family
Summary: Life is not easy fort he youth of the old pure blood dynasties of the magical society…
Disclaimer: All the characters in this story belong to JK Rowling, and I don't earn money with this little story ;)
Author's Notes: This is my first fanfiction in english, it is just a try. Still I hope you like it :) Oh, and I don't stick properly to JKR's notes about the age of the Black Sisters. For me, Andromeda ist he eldest and Bellatrix the youngest.
LIGHT BOOK 7 SPOILERS!
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Children of the Night
By Aisa
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„Be a good soldier.
I escape into your escape into our very favorite fearscape
It's across the sky and across my heart and I cross my legs oh my god
First my left foot then my right behind the other
Breadcrumbs lost under the snow.
Oh, mother the car's here
Maybe maybe you'll leave the light on for the dancing girl
He's gonna change my name
Maybe you'll leave the light
Just in case I like the dancing I can remember where I come come from."
- Tori Amos (Mother)
---
It had never been easy to be a child in the world of the Slytherin pureblood dynasties. Expecations to be fulfilled, marriages to be arranged, strict traditions to be passed from one generation to the other.
Nobody knows this better than the members of the Black Family.
Raised to strict rules, being tortured through the etiquette, the parents don't do anything to spare their children.
Being born to the noble and most ancient House of the stargazers has never been fun, Alphard Black thinks as he watches his nephews and nieces taking their lessons from their parents. Children are not born to rule and they won't learn it the easy way.
Andromeda, the eldest of Druella's girls, and Sirius, his brother's first-born, carry the weight of their blood on their delicate shoulders. Sirius, as the heir of the family, is to enter the Dark Order and Andromeda is supposed to be a good example. That's what they were told in the age of five and ten.
What things are these to say to your flesh and blood?
„Why can't you love your children?", Alphard had asked is brothers and sisters-in-law. „Your children, and not the persons that are supposed to continue your blood-line."
Walburga, Orion, Cygnus and Druella had looked at him as if they thought him a fool and continued preparing their sons and daughters for the task they would have to fulfill.
Never underestimate the heart of a child. Alphard never had and tried to give them the humanity they were refused by their parents.
Of course, these lessons of self-discipline are important, but they harden the heart that you need to be strong enough in this world. Their hearts - that's what Alphard wanted to save with his lessons – and he was successfull in the recent years.
Now he knows his protégés. He knows their reactions to the cruel units of their parents - Andromeds's silent rage, Narcissa's resigned desperation, Sirius's pain, Bellatrix's eagerness to do better and Regulus's dreamy drifing away.
He tries to find the balance between clarifying the importance of being a Black and duties connected to it, and keeping their hearts warm enough so it won't be filled with hatered against their own house.
He shows them the soft sides of life – ivory towers where they can clear their minds. Teaches Regulus how to play the piano, Narcissa to draw other things celestial charts.
The road to the Dark Order is long and Alphard doubts that all five of them will walk it to the end. Narcissa will, if she's asked to do it. Andromeda will if she can stand the pressure. The others are to young to evaluate.
They are all talented, that's what he loves about them. Espacially Sirius, Bellatrix and Regulus are the ideals of the House of Black – raven hair, steel eyes that can find the stars that borrowed their names to them and their relatives without problems, and their magical power is noticable even in their young age.
They will be great wizards and witches, no doubt. Slytherin will teach them what they have not learned at home yet. They will find a way into the world of their parents.
Alphard only hopes that the pressure won't not destroy them.
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„So, are you excited?", Uncle Alphard asks and strikes the piano keys softly.
„No", Sirius answers casual and leans his head against the cushion of the sofa.
„We'll be alright", adds Bellatrix. „We'll be sorted to Slytherin and make you proud." Both kids laugh.
They are more relaxed than I was, Andromeda thinks as she watches the scenery in the drawing room: Her uncle playing the piano, Regulus sitting next to him, just listening, her youngest sister and her favourite cousin lounging on the sofa and Narcissa on the floor with a book in her hands.
How nervous she had been when she was about to start at Hogwarts. She had made it and ended up in Slytherin, as appropriate. No matter how her thoughts had changed, she was definitely from the House of the Snake – clever, calculating, capable to the Dark Arts, even though she neither cared about nor liked them. She had drifted away from the things that her parents had tought her. Silently, so none of her relatives would notice.
„Do something about it", Ted had pleaded. „Tell them, tell them that you don't want to go their way."
„I can't", she had answered quietly and choked down her tears. ‚Never cry in front of anyone', her mother's voice ran through her head. „I can't."
Andromeda looks at Sirius thoughtfully. He is like her, he has her wild heart and she wants something else for him than the compunction she has suffered. On the one hand, she wants him to see that there is more than what they have been told during their childhood. More than blood and power. On the other hand, she knows only too well that it will be painful for him to live in Slytherin with all of these doubts. And it is unimaginable that he will end up anywhere else than in Slytherin – the Blacks have been in Slytherin ever since.
No need to worry about Bellatrix at least.
„Why can't you love your children for who they are?", Andromeda had heard her Uncle Alphard asking her mother once. „You can't do this – love as a reward only when they do what you want!"
Well, it works with Bellatrix. Everything she does, she does so her mother can be proud of her. So her mother smiles at her or shows her a small sign of affection.
It's all about her mother, especially since father had died three years ago. So Bellatrix sticks to the rules, she will be a good daughter. She had confessed it to Andromeda and Narcissa once: High marks, a job in which she can act for the Order. Being a master of the Dark Arts, finding an acceptable pure blood husband – and grandchildren, of course, to continue the blood line. All for her mother. It's mad…
Narcissa goes along with that. Not because of her mother, but because she's convinces of the superiourity of the pure blood. Reasonable.
Andromeda sighs. How can they be so relaxed when their life is going to start tomorrow?
---
„GRYFFINDOR!"
No! No, that's impossible!
Sirius's eyes seek the ones of his cousin, so similar to his own, wide open in shock.
As if in trance, he walks over to the House of the Lion. Sits down among stangers. Strangers in persons, in thinking, in living. And continues to stare at Bellatrix over the heads of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who returns his look incredulous.
How could this happen?
He was a Black – he couldn't end up in Gryffindor. He feels the looks of other purebloods who also wonder about the fact that a Black had achieved such a thing.
Of all people, he shares a dormitory with James Potter – Gryffindor to the core, a clear contray to Sirius. It doesn't take more than five sentences to get them to draw their wands, and it takes the surprising strength of a skinny, brown haired boy who introduces himself as Remus Lupin to put a stop to their little duel.
The Howler Sirius receives from Grimmauld Place doesn't make things better. ‚Bring honour to your family', his father's voice runs through his head.
This is impossible…
However, in spite of his thoughts that he would never be able to come to an arrangement with the situation, at the end of the year Sirius finds himself among his new best friends – James Potter, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew – glowing with pride as Gryffindor wins the House Cup – he has done everything in his might to support his House.
Back at Grimmauld Place he will have to deal with Bellatrix's and Narcissa's verbal stings and his father's reproaches.
It hurts, but it doesn't matter – it's too late anyway. Sirius can see the happy sparks in the eyes of Andromeda and Uncle Alphard and knows that he will find his way – with or without the Dark Order. With or without his family.
„Do what you want", Bellatrix hisses at him with strangely glittering eyes six years later when he's about to leave the noble and most ancient House for good. „But you will never get away completely. You are bound to us." She closes her heavy-lidded eyes for a moment.
The only sting that remains in his heart ist he memory of his cousin's lips on his cheek when she kisses him farewell.
The only thing that he doesn't want to leave behind.
The only thing that shall cloud his great escape and his freedom forever.
---
Nobody had said it would be easy.
It had hurt her to throw Sirius out of her live – mental at least.
But she knows her ivory tower. Music. The Arts. And her friends, of course.
Evan Rosier, Adrienne Wilkes, Severus Snape, Hieronymus Avery - and Rodolphus Lestrange.
They dive into the Dark Arts together since their fourth year and Lucius has brought them to the highest point. They receive lessons from the master of the Dark Arts.
It seems macabre that the shadow, who must not be named, who is dreaded all over Britain, teaches them the most noble art of magic. The one they can't learn in Hogwarts because of the old fool that runs the school. The most beautiful and most fascinating art.
It prescindes her from Sirius who steals into her mind far too often. It gives her another reason to work for.
She doesn't work for her mother's smile anymore – she work's for him. For her teacher. For her Lord.
And he claims nothing but her loyality.
She gives it to him willingly. They share the same aims: Purity of blood. Superiourity of the noble families. She marrys Rodolphus because it had been an old arrangement. She becomes Mrs. Lestrange, but she's not Rodolphus's. Not completely.
Her loyality belongs to the Dark Lord. Her body belongs to her husband, at night, unwillingly. And she wants to drown her heart, because it is too shameful to admit whom it belongs to.
He doesn't belong to her family anymore which should make things better – but it means that he doesn't belong to her world anymore. He is on the black-list. He is forbidden.
‚Never choose your heart over your mind', her mother's voice runs through her head.
He is forbidden and always will be.
Rodolphus knows it when she finally gives in to her heart. He sees it, the tiny hint of weakness in her eyes when she returns to her strength. A thought that fills him with hatred – enough to torture the aurors.
Bellatrix shares it. Damned be the so-called light that stole her love.
Her Lord is gone. Her love is in prison. Her body is little worth anymore. It makes no difference if she stays alert – or if she gives in to the madness.
Her madness turnes to rage, rage do cruelity. Cruelity against the Longbottoms brings her to Azkaban.
„Mother", she whisperes into the numb darkness, a tear rolling down her high cheekbones. „I started this for you. Are you proud of me?"
---
Narcissa feels numb. Her throat is sore from the tears she choked during all these years.
Little have attended her younger sister's furneral. She has caused too much pain. Not even Andromeda is here. Another graveyard, another tomb – she buries her daughter. Who died from the hand of her sister.
Rodolphus is there. No matter how much he has suffered from the unreturned love to his wife, he mourns her loss. And Narcissa knows that he, like her, doesn't see the skinny, oppressed servant of the Dark Lord as she lies down there in the black coffin. They both see the gorgeus, pale, raven haired warrior star that had walked her line until the end.
And Narcissa wonders. Why is she still alive? Wasn't death the road that her mother had sent them down?
Until a certain point they had all five stuck to the standarts their parents had passed to them.
„Be reasonable", they had told Andromeda.
She had been in her way. But she had listened to her heart finally and left the road. And now she was still alive. Alone, she had lost everyone she loved, but she was still alive.
„Be a good heir", they had told Sirius.
And they had pressured him too much. Every single word that had hurt him, that hat pushed a sting into his heart, had exploded. He had not been unlucky in Gryffindor, but after he ran away from Grimmauld Place, he welcomed the House of the Lion and ist attitude with all his might. He was a Gryffindor to the core in the end.
„Be ready", they had told Regulus when Sirius ran away.
He had been. All his life. Till he saw the walls closing in on him. Till he saw all of us in danger. Then he was ready to leave this life his parents had pictured for him. To save us.
„Be strong", they had told Bellatrix.
She had been until the bitter end. She had fought for her mother at the beginning. She had fought for her ideals. For the Dark Order. For Sirius, for Rodolphus, for the Dark Lord. A warrior. She had walked down the road to the Dark Order to the bitter end. Until she had reached the bottom. It had killed her.
„Be wise", they had told Narcissa.
She had tried. She had tried to fulfill the expectations by marrying a respactable man and being the only one giving birth to a son. It didn't work. She had wanted to walk that road, but it hadn't worked. But she was still alive. She had Lucius and she had Draco.
Raised to strict rules, being tortured through the etiquette, Narcissa finally knows why her Uncle Alphard wanted to keep their hearts beating. Why he didn't want the darkness to take hold over them. He didn't want them to die that cruel way.
And Narcissa would try everything to spare her son from suffering the darkness. I fit wasn't too late yet.
It had never been easy to be a child in the world of the Slytherin pureblood dynasties. Expecations to be fulfilled, marriages to be arranged, strict traditions to be passed from one generation to the other.
Nobody knows this better than the members of the Black Family.