Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Status: Incomplete

A/N: This isn't going to be canon-compliant, cos let's face it y'all, this little girl's existence fucks 'most everything up.

When a child is born, there are several universal truths that one might have to come to accept. One being that the child might not come out exactly as the parent wanted it to be. Another being that perhaps, the parent was not ready to have a child in the first place. Maybe, even going so far as to be distasteful of said progeny, to the point where even associating with them made the parent nauseous.

Now under any other type of circumstance, if a child was born with its own parents hating it, it would have probably developed a plethora of unwanted, unneeded and cumbersome childhood trauma, psychological issues and so forth that would have impeded their ability to function at full capacity, not to mention, even dream of reaching their full, unadulterated potential.

However, Orion and Walburga Black had never loved each other, not even for a short, delusional second, and so, they were crushed when they were told they had to marry. Orion because he was madly in love with his Potioneering, avoiding each and every human interaction when possible because, well, he didn't need people—not if he wasn't using them or manipulating them for his own benefit. Well, no...he did need people, but not in the way that most thought, not in the way he knew Walburga needed them. He needed them because he knew that if one got too entrenched within one's mind, well, nothing good ever came from that.

Walburga loathed Orion with a single-minded passion that curled around her heart so tightly it hardly allowed her to breathe. She'd never loved anyone, was sure she'd never love anyone, but ending up with Orion Black was just asking her to die of old-age and chronic anger problems. There was something about that man that made her curl her lip and want to spit out very unladylike things, as her mother would have once said. He made her sick to her stomach.

She married him in the fall, her lips pursed, eyes angry.

At least, she thought faintly as the ceremony came to an ending, he was ridiculously handsome.

(Some people even said that he was prettier than her but Walburga ignored them.)

The night of the wedding was awkward and fumbling, and she was sure that some curses had escaped her as they fulfilled their duty. In the privacy of her mind, she swore that if it turned out to be a boy, as her father had ordered, then there was no way in hell Walburga was letting that man touch her ever again.

For his part, Orion was desperately thinking of a River Whore he'd once seen on the side of the Thames.

They'd done it once, and then twice, just to be sure and then settled in for the wait.

The conception of Reyna Cybele Black was an immaculate one, and nothing went wrong with the pregnancy, until, of course, St. Mungo's decided to inform them that they were having a wonderful little girl, and weren't they just so delighted?

Walburga was not delighted, thank you very much.

No, she was furious. She'd slept with—no, no point in glamorizing it; she'd fucked—a man who she felt nothing for, a man whom she loathed (for no particular reason, mind you, but it was still valid in the sanctity of her mind) and Morgana had dared to bless her with a girl.

Her father had been furious.

Orion's parents, while upset it hadn't been a boy—they'd warned him not to end up like Cygnus and Druella with little Bella and 'Dromeda—were cautiously delighted that they'd have a little girl to spoil and mummy.

It had all changed, of course, when the patriarch had declared that they would have to pay the infraction twice fold. For every girl you shame us with, two boys must be born, Sirius Black had uttered calmly, and dread had crept over Orion's frame, coiling low in his throat. Walburga had been spitting mad, her shoulders drawn up like a prissy cat and Orion nearly had to contain her with charms when she'd bellowed her anger.

The Patriarch merely arched a cool eyebrow, disdain spilling from his lips as he waved away his wife's dramatics. "If you do not wish to raise the child, get rid of it."

For the first time in Orion's twenty-one years of life, he had felt sharp and poignant fear ripping into him at the sight of the contemplating gleam in his wife's eyes. And for the first time, he'd stood, anger rippling through his face as he glowered down at Walburga. She was selfish and cruel and vain, but she would not take his child.

"No." His voice echoed throughout their living room. "We will keep the girl. Blacks do not get rid of their own."

There was a murmur of agreement, despite the rage that flickered in his wife's eyes, and his parents looked on approvingly. That little girl was his daughter. No one was going to get rid of her, not while he was around to stop it.

His hands were still trembling as he sat down.

They fought often after that. Walburga was vicious in her anger, burning and ever-lasting, always wrathful. Orion had no doubt she could hold her grudges for a thousand years. At first, she did everything she could to get the child to abort naturally. She used complex, dark spells, ate cheese and drank warm milk, and once, when she thought he wasn't looking she'd tried to smoke a cigar. He'd knocked it out of her hands, his anger startling her.

"You will not take her from me," He'd hissed, months of pent up rage making him cruel and brutal as he held his wife at wand-point. "If you will not acknowledge her as your child, she will be mine. The others—well, they will be yours."

"Fuck you," She'd spat in his face, after the flicker of surprise had washed from her eyes, and the anger returned, brighter and stronger than ever.

"Already have," He sneered back. Her dark, seductive eyes lit up with fury and he continued further, breaking the nonexistent bond between them to smithereens. "Can't say I enjoyed it much."

(In another life, it had been a boy, a beautiful, bouncing boy that came first. And in the face of their delight, Walburga had slowly, carefully, allowed herself to place trust in her husband, until they loved each other quietly, refined in dignity, until the day they died.

This was not that life.)

She cursed him after that and well, they'd had to spend the day out of the room while Kreacher and Lorc cleaned everything up and put it back to new. They spent months avoiding each other; Orion working at the Ministry, Walburga seething in their ancestral home, occasionally leaving the sitting room to take High Tea with Druella and her father, who congratulated her on her healthy (she shook with fury whenever she heard that word) baby and her cordial, amicable relationship with Orion.

There were days, sometimes, that Orion wished it were the males who carried their children because he missed being able to place his hand on his wife's stomach and wait to feel a flicker of movement.

There were days, sometimes, that Walburga wished that it were the males who carried their children because she wanted to rip this mistake, anomaly, disappointment out of her womb and throw it to the husband who'd made her keep it.

She grew fatter and fatter until she could no longer see her feet and she wanted to burn Orion to a crisp and then finally—

The day came that the little monster was born.

The contractions had begun at midnight, on July 7th, 1954, and didn't stop until midday when a screaming, red-faced little girl was born in St. Mungo's subterranean floor seven, room seven.

It only took half an hour for Reyna's downy black hair to bloom to a deep purple, but Orion would forever remember that she had been born with six little freckles dashed across her perfect little nose.

Tell me what you think? I've been thinking about this for a while, and I've actually got several? OCs for Harry Potter, so I'm probably going to be focusing on this fandom for a while before I go batshit insane trying to fix the entirety of Naruto.

And yes, I'll definitely be finishing my other stories, but this one takes precedence, at least for a little bit.