Black Birthdays
Disclaimer: I am not J.K Rowling. I am still a fourteen year old English girl and thus do NOT own the rights to Harry Potter or any of these characters.
Part One
Bellatrix
The first birthday you remember isn't yours at all, it's Andromeda's. She is the tiniest little thing you've ever seen and you love her on sight. Your father (technically loving but never there) tells you how much like you she looks and that she's your responsibility now. You nod and hold out your arms for her, your Meda, the one you fight for.
The happiest birthday you have is your fifteenth. Meda, at thirteen, is old enough to dance and stay up late too, and you forget Cissy, too young to join in at only nine, and whirl around the room laughing. Your dress robes are deep blood red silk, with your first rubies around your neck and in your (newly pierced) ears. Meda's in Slytherin green and you realise then that she is your conscience.
Your nineteenth is the one you hated. It's just weeks since Meda left and you have yet to even mention her name. This is the birthday when you must marry Rudolphus, you've put it off far too long as it is, and you want her there to hold your hand but she isn't coming so you lock her away in the back corner of your head and ignore Cissy when she asks you if you miss Meda. She's thirteen now and a sudden, vivid memory of a thirteen year old Andromeda dancing in a green dress hits you. You close your eyes briefly willing the image away and when it is gone you get up in your wedding gown (utterly inappropriate virginal white) and slowly walk down the stairs as though to your death.
Andromeda
Your favourite birthday is your fourteenth. Mama (cold hearted and blatantly cruel) is persuaded by some miracle (you think probably Bellatrix) to allow you, Bella and, as an afterthought, Cissy out of the house. That in and of itself is something you'd have thought impossible but when it is revealed that there is a picnic (with a checked rug no less!) and a small boat on a lake, you accuse Bellatrix of having her under the Imperius curse. She giggles and doesn't deny it.
The one that scares you isn't yours; it's a cold December night when you first hold a tiny baby girl and watch as she changes her hair to pink then purple then as black as Bellatrix's. The nurse comes in with a terrified expression on her face and note in her hand. When you ask who it's from she stutters that a woman asked her to bring up to you. With a growing feeling of dread you open it slowly. In a familiar hand you haven't seen for a year, at least, is one word.
"Mongrel"
It is then that it sinks in that Bella, your big sister Bella, will always be after this precious baby in your arms. It is then that Bellatrix becomes no sister of yours, as you realise you would fight until the end for the child in your arms.
The worst, though, is your forty-fifth. Not only are your husband and daughter dead but you know well that Bellatrix Lestrange killed Nymphadora and it was probably on her orders that Ted died too. You spend the day sitting in the old rocking chair that Ted had brought home with suck an expression of pride, nursing Teddy where you once nursed Dora and living in the past, with a little candy-floss pink haired girl and man with a smile that melted your knees.
Narcissa
You spend your early birthdays waiting to be old enough to dance with Bella and Meda. The first one where you're allowed to do that is your thirteenth and you spend the whole afternoon getting ready. Bella and Meda laugh at you but Bella lends you a necklace and Meda brushes your hair until it shines and then puts it up into a tumbling bun. They stand at either side you in front of the mirror, three sisters against the world. Bella, the strong, Meda, the kind, and Cissy, the beautiful.
The one everyone forgets is your fourteenth. A year before, you'd stood beside your sisters and smiled. Now you cower behind Bella as your world crashes down around your ears and you are left with a Bella you hardly recognise and a gaping hole where Meda should be stood. You're not even allowed to mention her name, she is blasted from the family tree and Bella takes one robe from her wardrobe and then locks the room with a spell even Papa can't counter. Only you know how much she aches for her other half and there is nothing you can do for her.
You felt your heart break on your forty first. You watch Meda – your Meda, still – gather the white body in her arms, the niece you never knew and she cries, begs, pleads for her to come back. You hear her tell her that she is needed, that she has a son who is crying for his mum. You sit, frozen, as she weeps when she understands that the girl isn't coming back. You see Draco asleep in a corner and tip toe towards you big sister. She looks up as you get closer and, as she's done a million times when you were children, she opens her arms and cradles you in her lap. Her tears are wet in your hair and you mourn together for Bella, for Sirius and Regulas, for the niece and brother-in-law you never knew. But you have Meda and so you can cope, the two of you, together.