1507

The flames leapt, acid green, and in a swirl of black velvet and scarlet silk the man strode out of the fireplace. Cousin Arcturus was ever known for his flamboyant tastes. He had attended upon the Duke of Padua, a great patron of the Satanic Arts, in wine-sodden, magic-ridden Italy - that would account for the flamboyance. There was something not quite English in it - but then of course, Cousin Arcturus could hardly be called English even though he had been born and bred in the heart of the Midlands. Englishmen must be men, human first of all.

And Cousin Arcturus was not quite human, after all.

"Cousin Thomas," Arcturus Black said, chilled courtesy and contempt blended in his voice like sugar and milk. "How fare you?"

"Well," Thomas Boleyn replied, inclining his head with a courtier's grace. "Will you not have a seat?"

But Arcturus was not looking at him. He was taking in his surroundings, the opulence of the tapestry room where Thomas had chosen to hold their private interview in. He had chosen well - the quaintness of the settings (it was set in the octagonally-shaped tower room), the lavishness of the furnishings, the pleasant air and happy situation of the apartment... yes, for once, his cousin seemed impressed with what he, Thomas Boleyn, the despised scion, the Squib's son, owned. A thrill of pleasure shot through him.

Until Arcturus laughed. "What gaudy colours!" he cried. "What rude tastes! I wonder you can stand it for long." He paused, looking thoughtful. "But then, of course, I suppose it hardly matters to you, being quite Muggle..." He smiled, "Hardly noted for their subtlety or observational skills, are they?"

His slim, elegant white fingers - recognizable as an aristocrat's hand in both worlds, Muggle and wizard - idly traced a thread. "Fawns that cannot fly before the dogs that chase them. Nymphs and mermaids who will not smile at you. And you call this art."

"They move," she said, with a trace of melancholy in her voice. It was whisper-soft, her voice, but her son heard her. "In my world they move." She turned her wistful black eyes away from the painting.

"No, I will not sit, Cousin, though I am sure the offer was kindly meant. I mean to be off on my way as soon as our interview-" oh how very tedious, yet how very necessary -"is concluded. The Wizengamot convenes in an hour and my presence is required."

What, a green, callow boy like you? And a Black at that? Thomas smiled coldly, glad that he knew enough about the wizarding world - his mother's legacy - to meet his cousin on that point. "Your seat on the Wizengamot was, no doubt, your wife's dowry? I hear the Gaunts are richer in titles than in Galleons."

Arcturus chuckled. "They're royal on both sides of the blanket, aren't they?" he said lightly. "Gaunts, Peverells - part-Plantagenet all of them. And in our world-"

"An unbroken line of descent for nigh a thousand years," Thomas said. "They'd claim they were related to the Caesars if they could."

"The Blacks of the Roman world, no doubt," Arcturus said dryly. The Blacks were a good family, two hundred years of unbroken Pureblood descent, a few manors, a few fiefs of Muggle serfs, a Wizengamot seat or two... but they were not Peverells or Gaunts or Gamps... oh yes, they might be suitable as bridegrooms for the younger daughters of impoverished lines, but they weren't really quite the thing...

"Blacks, Boleyns, much the same," Arcturus said. "I hear your lady wife is of the Howard blood? The Duke of Norfolk's daughter - well that's a step up for a jumped-up merchant's son, is it not?" His lip curled. "Though, from your mother's side I suppose the match was not quite the mesalliance it would seem. She was a Black after all, Squib forsooth."

"As is your firstborn child," Thomas answered. "Your letter was all about that - and incidentally, I wish you would stop owling me."

"Why?" Arcturus asked, all innocence.

"Superstitious servants," Thomas mumbled. "Owls - well they haven't a dovish reputation about here. You might as well have used a raven, for all the notice it would attract."

"Churls," Arcturus snorted, lip curling. "What right have servants to think without their lord master's consent? I detest this custom of using human servants - Elves are by far more tractable and serviceable. The only human servants our kind maintain at our establishments are our bedmates."

"To business," Thomas said. Arcturus's 'bedmates' were Muggle peasant girls lured to his pleasure-chambers (dungeons) by spells and potions. It did not bear discussion. "You said my infant daughter has witchblood. That she is a witch. How did you find out?"

"Written in the Hogwarts registers at her birth," Arcturus said negligently. "Quite a simple task to go through the archives, well, at least for one with a seat on the Wizengamot..." He looked bitter. "While my daughter is a Squib." He spat the word out the way he would say 'whore'. "I would have rather had her stillborn."

"You could have drowned her like a kitten, when you found out."

"My wife is sentimental," Arcturus said dryly. "We planned to lock her away, oh somewhere convenient, perhaps marry her off to some inconsequential Muggle when she came of age... just like the family did with your mother. But this, by far, is the cleverer plan - we shall exchange the children."

Thomas raised an eyebrow.

Arcturus scowled. "What would you do with a witch? What would I do with a Squib? She is my trueborn child - she will be comely and strong to bear sons and that is all you Muggles look for in your daughters."

"I take it you look for wits in your daughters," Thomas said scornfully.

Arcturus gave the ghost of a smile. "Wits," he agreed. "And a good wand hand. And wide hips to bear children - yes, perhaps we are more discriminating than you. Perhaps that is why we have advanced so far, while you still squat in the mud."

Thomas found it a curious system. "And you send all your children, the boys and the girls, to this Hogwarts, to be apprenticed in magic for many years. Your daughters must be so old after they are trained - too old by far for a first marriage."

"Eighteen, thereabouts," Arcturus agreed. "Rather old - but we, at least the families of the better sort, betroth them when they are eleven, before they are sent off to school. And then around their fourteenth year, in the summer, we wed them."

"And bed them?"

Arcturus laughed. "No," he admitted. "We admit children to Hogwarts, not infants. Come summer," he said. "My youngest sister, Lycoris, will be wed to a Yaxley boy - she is thirteen and he fifteen. After she has finished her schooling, they will live together as man and wife. We do not consider late childbearing a defect - the mothers and their children are all the healthier for the wait. A child of thirteen is not fit to bear children herself - perhaps that is why your Lady Margaret Beaufort bore no further children after she was blessed with your sainted penny-pincher King Henry."

"My child is golden-haired," Thomas said. "Like my first daughter, Mary. Yours will be black."

"A neat Memory charm on her wetnurses will do the trick. Scoop out the old memories, plant a new," Arcturus said, unmoved. "The children will be cousins - she will be similar enough in face with you to appear as your own child. Your wife too-"

"That will not be necessary," Thomas said. "My lady wife has not set eyes on our daughter since her christening - no doubt she hardly remembers what colour the child's hair was, or her eyes.

Arcturus's eyebrows rose. "Naturally, she is in attendance at Court, upon the Queen. And I suppose she would not care to look upon a daughter before the daughter was of marriageable age. What a pleasant life my child will lead in Hever - childhood buried in the country and once she flowers, you'll wed her and bed her, have her fritter her girlhood away at Court dancing upon the King. And then when she can no longer boast of a pretty face, she'll be sent back to the country to raise her spawn and keep the accounts and mewl about the good old days. Our women must thank whichever Gods exist, on their knees, that they were not born Muggles."

Thomas frowned. "So it is a bargain then?"

"You speak like a merchant," Arcturus sniffed. "You would do well to remember your position in the world - the son of a Black, the husband of a Howard."

"The son of an outcaste Black and husband to a whoring Howard," Thomas said, smiling thinly. "Perhaps my common merchant Boleyn blood is worth as much as my mother's or my wife's."

"It is concluded then," Arcturus said. "I shall send an Elf with the babe at any hour convenient to you. Trust me, you will not regret the bargain."

"Hardly a bargain," Thomas said negligently. "A golden-haired girl for a black-haired girl, witch for Squib - yet females both. What difference does it make?"

Arcturus smiled. "What difference indeed?"

1536

The Ministry had begun a small, weekly publication in March. It was called The Prophet and was modelled upon the weekly newsletters that were delievered to the public in Italy and parts of Spain. A rather good and useful thing - one part news, one part recipes and advertisements and eight parts gossip.

Andromeda and her children had come home for the week - her husband, Consus Peverell would be in France, negotiating something or the other, and Andromeda found it hard to get along at the Peverell Castle with only her mother-in-law for company. Arcturus was fierecely, frankly proud of the fine name she had married into - the first Black girl to marry a Peverell, fancy that. Sometimes he quite forget that she was not a Black girl after all - so pretty and dainty and golden, kittenish and vixenish by turns, champion duellist all the time. A Muggle's daughter. The greatest beauty in the wizarding world.

Andromeda's youngest boy, six-year-old Romulus was reading The Prophet out loud for his grandparents today. "The Muggle Section," he announced importantly.

"Why do we need a Muggle Section at all?" ten-year-old Mercurius asked suddenly. "They're vermin."

"Know thy enemy," Andromeda said solemnly. She laughed as she added, "You'll have the spawn of those vermin in your class next year. Best to know what knavishness they're up to, aye?"

"The Execution of the Her Majesty, Queen Anne, was conducted on the-"

Arcturus frowned. "So he did murder her at last," he said softly, turning his face away. His wife bit her lip and looked down at her hands.

"He found himself a nice little girl from Wiltshire in place of that Frenchified vixen," Andromeda said negligently, tossing her long golden hair. "Let's hope she puts a boy in his cradle, or he'll put her head on the executioner's block."

"Will he really marry Mistress Jane Seymour?"

"That's the gossip, your blessed father told me, child," she replied. "And he ought to know as well as anyone, cheek to jowl as he is with the Minister for Magic, and he has the King's ear..."

"Why?" Romulus asked suddenly. "Why does the Minister for Magic have to have the Muggle King's ear. I mean, even if he's a king, he's still-"

"Vermin," Arcturus said coldly. "Vermin indeed."

Andromeda looked amused. "And I thought my father would teach my son to be politic! Why, pray, has this news riled you so? We all knew he was going to get rid of the Queen one way or another and it seems a mercy that he used a French swordsman on her when all the country was raring for her to be burnt at the stake like a witch." She giggled. "My - that must hurt! D'you remember the tale of Wendys the Wild? Or was it Willa the-?"

"Hardly a witch, that Muggle Queen," Arcturus said, rising. He looked at his golden-haired daughter and then he thought about the black-haired girl whom he had never set eyes on, but of whom he had heard much. Black hair, black eyes, black-soulled like a witch they said. The Black Girl. "Hardly a witch."

1961

"Mother, am I a changeling?"

"Gracious, Cissy, of course not! What gave you that idea?"

Six-year-old Narcissa crawled into her mother's lap and tugged sullenly at a lock of her golden hair. "Bella," she said sulkily.

"You mustn't let your sister get to you - you know how she's like."

Do I ever. "I have yellow hair."

"Prettier than black, I should say - though you won't tell your father that, will you?"

"I'm the only person who was yellow hair!"

"No darling, I've seen a blonde or two before, I think. Or three."

"I mean, I'm the only Black with yellow hair."

"Like a little honeybee," her mother said fondly, kissing her cheek. "Black and blonde."

"Like a Hufflepuff, Bella said."

"I'll have a word with her. What happened?"

"Well Meda and I were reading The Princess and the Peasant-"

"Not again!"

"It's nice," Narcissa protested. "It's just beautiful!"

"It's based on a Muggle tale - The Prince and the Pauper, I think. Why can't you read Beedle the Bard like I did."

"They're so old!"

"We diverge - so you were reading that book and-?"

"Bella said it was based on Andromeda Black - not Meda, just some lady who lived ages ago-"

"Sixteenth century. Ancestress of yours. But the book's fiction, you know. No connection to reality."

"She had yellow hair."

"Say blonde - it sounds better. Yes, so she did - and wasn't she the prettiest woman in the world then? Wed to a Peverell - I hope you'll marry as high as her one day, though the Peverells are all dead now and we Blacks have taken their place. So I suppose you can only marry low now."

"She was a changeling - the princess in the book! And she had yellow hair, but she was a Black and so-"

Her mother laughed. "Oh my poor, addle-witted little Cissy," she said, stroking her baby's hair. "You pretty fool - did you let that upset you?"

"Isn't it true?"

"Certainly not - could you be as beautiful as you are if you were not my trueborn daughter?"

Cissy smiled, comforted. "Do you think I'm as beautiful as you, mother?"

"Prettier by far! Now do you want to know what Mrs Malfoy told me that her son said about you?"

"Lucius?" Cissy asked, eyes shining. "What'd he say?"

"Well..."