Prologue
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And in the midst of all the groans, the tearing of flesh, the screams and curses and, finally, the cries of an infant, Bellatrix Black sat in the darkest corner of the room, cross-legged with a book of nursery rhymes in her lap. Bella watched the scene of childbirth with a detached expression on her face, wincing slightly when she glanced at her mother's ugly, contorted face.
Esther Black was laid out on the bed, Healers grouped around her, poking and prodding and muttering incantations. Her belly loomed hugely, swollen from pregnancy, and the rip of flesh and the sliding of blood and mucus and skin filled the room.
No one had noticed Bella slip so quietly in the chamber, and sit down in the corner. At first, Bella had been frightened, hiding her face behind her hands, biting her lip at the shrieks of pain. But something had hardened and now she merely stared, methodically memorizing every shout and grimace.
Her father, Alphard Black, sat outside in the hallway, probably completing that day's crossword puzzle in The Daily Prophet.
Bella was four years old. The year was 1956. It was the end of August, and the heat squelched the Black family uncomfortably, leaving unbecoming stains and frayed edges.
There was a horrible sucking sound, and Esther Black screamed once more. The Healers hurried to her, and, suddenly, held up a bloody and slick baby.
"A girl," the tallest proclaimed, and Esther Black fainted.
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The baby was named Andromeda, after the loveliest constellation in the sky. (It was a Black tradition to for star-like names). Bella's emotions to her where taffy-like in their velocity, and fickle to the core.
Andie, as she was nicknamed, was a quiet child of grace and curiosity. Esther adored her, and Alphard doted. Bella tried to be nice (she really did!), but certain moments brought out the worst in her.
Nevertheless, they were a happy family of four.
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Sirius Black was their eldest cousin; seven years younger then Bella and three younger then Andie. From early on, the women of the family prized him. He possessed the aristocratic good looks of the Blacks paired with the creeping sensuality of Melifluas (his mother's family). He preferred Andie over the rest of the family, but Andie's father Alphard was a close second.
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In 1960, Esther and Talitha (Sirius's mother) both became pregnant. Bella was nine, passionate already, and Andie was five, small and lovely. Sirius was two.
Bella lay in her room, tracing the painted constellations on her ceiling absent-mindedly. Her bed contoured to her, the blankets sticking like glue. It was a horrible, humid, summer day.
Bella always preferred winter.
"Two more years til Hogwarts, two more years til Hogwarts..." she muttered, her dark eyes fluttering open, then closed, with each breath.
She had been pegged as "the studious one" by her trying Aunt Talitha. This was almost true; she loved learning interesting new things, and then teaching them to her little sister and cousin, who watched her wide-eyed. "A professor, for sure," Aunt Talitha had sniffed, stroking her expanding stomach. And growing inside there? A Minister of Magic, a Lord, a scientist...., the urgent scribbles of Aunt Talitha, in her little leather-covered book, read.
A tap on the door.
"Yes?" Bella called.
It swung open, revealing her father, tall and stooped over in Bella's low-ceilinged room. "Hello," he greeted her, smiling slightly. He sat on a wicker chair in the corner.
Alphard Black was a tired man of thirty-five, though he looked fifty, at least. Esther Black, a young widow at the age of twenty-three, had fallen madly in love with the young, rich man of twenty-five, and had married him the following year. Marriage had not been kind to him. After the stillbirth of their first child, Esther had gradually transformed herself into a shrieking harpy of sorts; hysterical at the tiniest thing, and in cahoots with his sister-in-law, the scheming Talitha Meliflua. Alphard's face had lost its youth, and a weak chin was revealed.
He was not a happy man, to say the least.
"How are you?" he asked, trying and failing to be warm and welcoming.
Bella stared at him. "Fine," she managed, crossing her pale arms.
The conversation died. "I..." he began, then stopped, staring at his soft palms. He looked up, biting his lip. Finally, he asked her, "How do you feel about the pregnancy?"
She traced her bedspread. "I don't know."
"Your mother isn't very strong. I don't know if she'll...if she'll completely make it through."
"Can't the Healers do something?"
"They've been giving her a potion of some sorts, but Esther...your mother, I mean....She dumps it down the sink, or makes it Vanish."
Bella's head nodded forward, her neck bending oddly. Her long, dark slid over her face, and her fingers began to knot themselves together.
Alphard Black stood up. "I love you."
"Love you, Daddy," she murmured.
The door closed.
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Andie clutched at the pale yellow sundress Bella wore. It didn't suit her at all.
Bella looked down. "What?" she asked crossly.
"Will Mummy be okay?" Andie barely whispered in her childish, feminine voice. Bella allowed herself a quick smile.
"I'm sure she will," she answered, turning back to her comic book (The Amazing Adventures of Millicent Rose, Muggle Hunter. It was very old, and very politically incorrect. Aunt Talitha snuck it to her.).
A strained scream in the other room. Andie jumped, sucking noisily on her index finger, and clutching Mr. Boo, her ugly and worn stuffed rabbit.
"She's okay," Bella murmured absently, intent on the green explosion Millicent Rose had just set off towards a rogue Muggle man.
"She's okay."
It was July, and Esther was a month overdue. Talitha had given birth back in January, to a frail baby boy named Regulus.
This was the first year in - well, it seemed like forever - that the other branch of the Black family had not come to spend the summer at Black Manor. Bella wondered if they would still go to 12 Grimmauld Place for Christmas. It seemed unlikely.
Andie bit her lip, a trait taken from her father, who was in Esther's bedchambers, standing in a corner, trying to offer words of consolation to his screaming wife (they weren't working).
Finally, though, the baby was born - and their father jumped out of the room excitedly - and their mother wept, full of love and anger and sadness - and Bella and Andie sat there,
It was a girl. Narcissa Black. The first to not be named after a heavenly figure in the sky. A flower, almost.
"Cissa," Andie gulped, trying to pronounce it; and the nickname stuck.
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