A.N. Hi! So basically me and my brother do a Harry Potter marathon every single year, in the summer holidays. This has been tradition for as long as I can remember now. We started yesterday, and whilst watching, I came up with the idea for this story. I hope you like it, and please tell me what you think in the comments!

DISCLAIMER: Sadly, I do not own Harry Potter, or else I would have insisted that Ginny be properly represented in the films.

11th of August, 2004

Ellesmere, Shropshire, U.K.

A slender man, with hollow cheeks and icy blonde hair that fell past his shoulders, strands of grey more prominent than ever, paced back and forth in the narrow corridor, wringing his hands together with exasperation. Under his breath he muttered things to himself with a sharp tongue and almost venomous looking, silver eyes. He was clothed in what appeared to be finely crafted rags, which told of a man who once had been distinguished and powerful. Now, much like his features, they had diminished in grandeur.

His wife's screams echoed around the small, matchbox house, but the man seemed to have more pressing things on his mind. For instance, his son had come to him a mere month ago, with complaints of a pain in his forearm. Dismissing it as paranoia, the man thought nothing more of it. Until yesterday that is.

Dark Marks were as rare as rare can be nowadays, especially since the Dark Lord's defeat just over six years ago. Most of his comrades had been imprisoned, or killed, or, like him, fled. Lucius was no longer a wanted man, due to evidence he gave that his family were forced into helping the Dark Lord, evidence that may or may not have been fabricated. However that didn't mean he was welcome back into the public eye.

Lucius Malfoy had grown bitter, and cold. He couldn't sleep at night, living in constant fear that those far more loyal to the Dark Lord will find him, and make him rue ever running away. Terrified of his own shadow, Lucius thought that he'd never escape who he once was. So, when the Dark Mark on his arm started to trouble him again, burning as though it had been held over flames, he was more afraid now, then he had ever been.

What did it mean? Surely he wasn't coming back?

Worrying about his own woes had grown so prominent in his mind, that it overshadowed even the birth of his child, happening in the room beside him.

He rolled his sleeve up, and traced his fore finger over the fading ink. Lucius could swear he could hear the Dark Lord's cackling, almost a whisper in his ear, sending chills up his spine. The snake appeared to have withered away, thinner and feeble looking.

Pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, Lucius had retreated so far into his own thoughts, he didn't notice a little boy tugging on the hem of his raven coloured cloak. He slid his sleeve down immediately, flinching. Looking down, his curled his lip up at the child, with flaming orange hair, and a bountiful of freckles across his cheeks. He resembled neither his mother or father, though had inherited the same birth condition she possessed; he was a Metamorphmagus.

"Why is she screaming?"

Lucius removed the boy's hand, rather forcefully, plucking at his fingers. He had neither the will, or the patience, to strike up a conversation with a six year old. Even if it was his nephew.

Turning his back on the boy, Lucius, went to knock on the door, when it swung open before he got the chance.

There, in front of him, stood his sister-in-law. She was clad in an apron, and had crows feet decorating her face. She looked nothing like either of her sisters, save for the eyes, which were a dark hazel. She glanced over Lucius, and beamed at the little boy. He called out to her, calling her 'grandma!', and clung onto her leg.

"Teddy's chose ginger this week, haven't you?" she says, to no one in particular. It certainly wasn't to Lucius; he couldn't care less. "He's been spending every other weekend with the Weasley's, I suppose that's influenced his decision."

"As riveting as this conversation is, may I please be with my wife?" Lucius inquires, callously.

Andromeda Tonks tightens her lips into a thin line, and stands to the side, allowing the man through. Inside the room lay her sister, Narcissa, her blonde locks, now greying, stuck to her forehead and the nape of her neck with sweat, and her fair skin was flushed. In her arms, she held a little baby, bundled up in ivory cloth.

Lucius glided across the room, and stood over his wife, looking down at the child.

"What is it?" he asked her, in a tone that one would least expect to hear from a new father.

"It's a girl, Lucius," Narcissa answered, with a beam that stretched across her face, causing her to look at least ten years younger. Clearly she was happier about this baby than her husband. Andromeda also picked up on this.

"What are you going to call her?" she points out, as Teddy goes over to greet his new relative. Andromeda explains to him that this would have been his mother's cousin.

Narcissa had put a lot of thought into naming her baby, and had come up with plenty alternatives if it were to be a boy, or a girl. She knew Lucius, though displeased about being 'burdened' with another child, especially at their age, had been hoping it would be a boy, if they had to have a child at all. However, after raising Draco, letting Lucius have his say about the boy's livelihood, she had been keeping her fingers crossed for a little girl, one she could have solely to herself. It had been a Black tradition ever since there had been Black's to name your child after a constellation. Their daughter may bare the surname Malfoy, but she still was a Black, through blood and birth.

"I was thinking Cassiopeia, like the cluster of stars," she smiled, tapping the nose of her newborn.

"That's beautiful," Andromeda agreed, taking her sister aback.

It was out of mere pity that Andromeda had allowed her sister and husband to stay the past few weeks. They'd been moving around the country, never staying in one place too long. When Narcissa had discovered she was pregnant, it had been nothing short of a shock. At forty-nine years old she had never expected to bear another child. Yet there she was, carrying a child, living out of bags in abandoned castles and - God forbid - Muggle homes. Who was going to take them in, when anyone who had ever meant anything to the family were dead, or in Azkaban, or in hiding too? Narcissa, grasping at straws more than anything, reached out to her sister as a last resort. The rest of their family had long since perished. Maybe it was losing her own child that had made Andromeda sympathetic, maybe it was raising her orphaned grandson. Either way, she took them in. Lucius Malfoy had always repulsed her, his medieval views on pureblood privileges, which the Black family had always upheld, was the sole reason she had been disowned in the first place. Her sister, however, had been the only one to cry when she left.

"Cassiopeia Celeste Bellatrix Malfoy," Narcissa listed, with an air of satisfaction about her.

"You're going to name this poor child after her?" Andromeda spat, furrowing her eyebrows.

"She was our sister, Meda."

"She was a murderer, or did you simply gloss over that fact?" the youngest Black sister hissed. "She killed our cousin! Killed my daughter, Cissy, my only daughter!"

Narcissa's eyes softened, and she struggled to find words to string together to express her grief. She couldn't understand her sister's pain at losing a child - here she was, just having given birth to her second child - but she too had suffered loss. Despite everything, she had loved her sister Bellatrix, and though she would never condone her past actions, there wasn't anything she wouldn't give to get her back.

"Bellatrix was a passionate and loyal woman who fought for what she believed in to her last breath, which is a lot more than can be said about you or your filthy Muggle husband," Lucius exhaled, as though bored.

"Lucius!" cried Narcissa, hardly believing her own ears. She glanced over at her sister, to see a pool of tears brimming in her eyes, threatening to spill. She pulled Teddy away from the newborn girl, and clutched him to her person.

"In the morning, I want you both out. I don't know what I was thinking letting you two back into my home, you're the same selfish low-lifes who put fortune over family I knew all those decades ago. You can find somewhere else to stay, I don't care in the slightest where."

Her face falling, Narcissa tried her best to plead with the woman. "Meda, please, we have a baby - "

"Who I give my deepest condolences to, having you two monsters as parents. First light, and you're to leave. Or else I'll personally send word out to all the Death Eaters who evaded death, and the law, do I make myself clear?"

"You foul, cowardly blood-traitor - "

"Do I make myself clear?" Andromeda called, raising her voice to drown out Lucius's own.

Narcissa, wiping away her tears, trying to hold herself together, nodded. Andromeda then left the room, but not before Teddy escaped her grip, and planted a kiss atop of the little girl's head. "Night night, Cassie," he whispered, in that kind of whisper that's not really a whisper only toddlers do.

The woman then left the room, swiftly, without saying another word to anybody. Lucius merely gritted his teeth, cursing the estranged Black sister under his breath. Looking over at his wife, who was now weeping, rocking baby Cassiopeia, he thought about saying something, anything that would comfort her. Then the pain shot up his arm, and he decided against it. He crossed the room and approached the door, with the aim of packing his bags ready for the next day, when Narcissa called out to him.

"What are we going to do about the baby?" she asked, in a small voice. She'd been worrying for months, and months, but now it was real, now she was holding her, and they had to do something, set something down in stone.

"What about the baby?" Lucius sighed.

"Everything, Lucius! We can't raise her in hiding, we can't care for her when we're forever looking behind our shoulders," she exclaimed. "What about when she turns eleven? What about school, what about magic? Is she ever going to learn?"

Then Lucius turned to look at his wife, and in that moment she wondered why on earth she ever married a man so cruel. The dim lights in the room cast a sinister light on his sullen face, and his eyes held no emotion, no feeling. Then he grinned, a grin that could only be described as nefarious.

"You should have considered this before you had her," he hissed.

"It takes two to have a child, Lucius, do not try and pin this all on me!"

"Who insisted we kept her?"

Narcissa didn't know how to reply. She didn't think she had to. It's not really a question she believed needed answering. She had wanted a daughter, ever since she was a little girl and old enough to dream. Lucius was contempt with a boy; after all, he needed an heir, didn't he? That was twenty-four years ago. Narcissa was being given the opportunity of a lifetime, she'd be a fool to give it up. Given her current circumstance, it wasn't the complete dream she'd wanted, but it was being granted all the same.

What kind of a person tells a mother she shouldn't have had her child?

And what kind of woman marries this person?

Lucius bound over to his wife, and brought his face close up to her ears, so close she could feel his coarse stubble grazing against her cheek.

"Listen here, alright? She won't ever go to Hogwarts, she won't ever get to own a wand, she won't ever get to perform magic. She's going to stay indoors, with us, where she's hidden. Nobody will know about her, not the Ministry, not the school. She will follow my terms, or else she can find somewhere else to go. She's been born, but she won't get to live. That's down to you."

What Narcissa should have done was leave that night, without her husband. She was never a Death Eater, she doesn't bear the mark. Her and Cassiopeia could have disappeared, and they would have been alright together.

But she stayed.