There was a time when you had taught yourself to cope; a time when you cooked, you cleaned, you bent yourself, proud daughter of Slytherin, before the warbling note of their every decree and there were no problems.
But when Brother found you gazing so wantonly upon filth more excellent than your own, and when Brother clamped a hand around your arm, wrenched you away from the hedge and demanded in such a terrible voice what you were doing, when your fingers numbed and throbbed from his grip and you began crying and didn't even care that you were because you'd promised yourself that by Merlin, no one would ever know, then, yes, then there was a problem.
The snakes hurried to curl around Brother's feet, told him all about your cheek, your treachery, about how they smelled the lust all over you, and you were very frightened. You swayed and murmured that you felt sick and Brother told you he knew that you were. You made a pact with him that day, a deal in which you had admittedly little faith yet one the stakes of which you knew you could not afford and with consequences you knew you must never allow to become realised.
And the serpents laughed at their sport, slithered between your sheets at night and whispered their scorn in your ear, and though you swear it was never your intention they forced you to learn ways to break them better than your brother ever did. And he began to notice in that oblivious way in which he eventually became apprised of all things; he became aware of the rattles scattered around the garden, the scales glinting among the dust on the floor, the jar of eyes and tongues and cracked ribs you kept beneath your pillow, and a few times he even caught you licking tepid blood from your hands, though he never thought to question you. Your favourite part is he never knew that when you smiled so to chop the meat for supper it was not wholly out of an attempt to appease him.
And Papa, thankfully, doesn't have any idea yet. Brother never could hold a thought, and you were always good at hiding things from Papa, you had to learn, because you would not allow yourself to be like Mama. You had higher ambitions for yourself than to waste away as the bearer of withered heirs to a failing line, though you are afraid because Brother gets more like Papa everyday and Papa had a sister once too and you have always been smarter than your brother and no one had to explain to you why the family tapestry goes straight up and down. And sometimes at night you used to climb out of the window and stand by Mama's stone, pick distractedly at the weeds covering the five littler ones nestled among the cabbages, and think until your throat got tight until you were so aware of the unnatural circumstances of your beginning and of your whole history until you couldn't bear to be alive and there was nothing you could do, there was never anything you could do, and there is nothing you will ever be able to do about anything as long as you are one of them.