Author's Note: This was written before JK Rowling published the Pottermore article on the Potter family, so the family tree with regards to the Potters is incorrect—(we now know Charlus Potter isn't James' dad, and so Cassiopeia wouldn't be related to Harry and James in the way stated in this story)

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

It was evident, if not to anybody but myself, that I was dying.

Unwed, no children, and no living siblings that I was aware of. We Blacks are a large family, to say the least—perhaps the biggest of all pure-blood wizarding families. Generations of Blacks have spread throughout the wizarding community, and I'd be thoroughly impressed if you could find a genuine, pure-blood witch or wizard who isn't descended from, or related to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, no matter how distantly.

Yet who would be to visit me in my final hour? Who would weep by my bedside, clutching my hand as I took my final breath?

It was with these bitter thoughts swirling in my mind that I realised, throughout my life, I had achieved absolutely nothing. I had offered nothing to my family and honoured them in no way whatsoever. It did not matter that I was about to die because it was clear to me that I could have died fifty years ago without having any different effect. In fact, even if I had never been born those seventy-seven years ago, my life, and therefore nobody around me's life, would have been altered in the slightest. I was no more than a ghost, a shadow.

Who could honestly say their life had been affected by Cassiopeia Black? Who could honestly say that my life had been a crucial and important event in their own sorry life?

Casting my mind back to the very first memory I had, images of my young siblings clouded my vision. Though I was not the eldest child of my parents, I was their eldest daughter, and that gave me a sense of great responsibility, even from such a young age. Little Dorea, the youngest of the four of us, was my sister to teach. I was to be her role model and guide her through her life—teach her the ways of the Blacks—our morals, our duties, our loyalties, our attitude towards certain situations. And though she had followed in my footsteps as best I could lead her, she had eventually gone astray.

Not too outrageously, I might add—certainly not enough for her to lose her place on the family tree and therefore in our noble family. Compared to the other Blacks who had gone astray, she'd barely done anything. No, the incident I am referring to is her choice in husbands. She was fairly young when she married Charlus Potter, despite our parents' suggestion that she keep her options open.

The Potters were a delightful family, completely pure-blooded, but they were different to us. We Blacks represent our name. The Dark Arts were not something to be shied away from; I learnt so much when I was a young child. We were taught to welcome this branch of magic, and to devote our life and our loyalty to Slytherin house, as Slytherin himself was the most honourable wizard to have lived—and he'd certainly embraced the Dark Arts too.

The Potters thought differently. Though they were noble and pure-blooded, their loyalty was spread differently. They didn't understand that Slytherin was the wizard we should all have been aspiring to be like. Gryffindor was just as worthy to them, and this conflicted with our own family understanding. We were known as a dark family, just like our name. And the Potters were a light family, meaning they did not embrace Dark Magic as freely as we did. They did not completely welcome the rise of the Dark Lord and all that he stood for.

So even though it was my duty to make a respectable woman out of Dorea, she did not heed my teachings as much as I would have hoped. It is as though I was never in her life. She married Potter, and my parents accepted this. He came from a respectable family, and his bloodline was much purer than most others around, so they overlooked his differing family lifestyle. I fear they were also worried that she would deceive them if they forbade her, and that would bring shame on them as much as it would on her. They were too fond of her to disown her, so I'm certain that is the reason they accepted her marriage.

I have learnt, myself, that marriage to a man like Potter is better than no marriage at all. A marriage means heirs and inheritance; it means carrying on our ancient bloodline and upholding our status. And, in that sense, I have failed.

Although I was initially shocked that Dorea married a wizard from a light family, I was very fond of her son—my nephew, James. James should not have been accepted by our family, and I know many were dissatisfied with him, but there was something about him that made me adore him. I, of course, never had children of my own, and I was not particularly keen on my elder brother's children. But James was different. He was like a son to me, and he was a complete contrast to the Black family, which is perhaps what made me so interested and fascinated by him. It is just the same as with my great-nephew, Sirius. Both were in Gryffindor, both were rebellious to the ways of the Black family, and both of them gained my adoration.

It is just a shame the way that things worked out for them both.

So Dorea did not particularly make my parents proud through her decision to marry Potter. But it didn't matter because they had a daughter who did. Although I did nothing particularly interesting with my life—my job was an ordinary Ministry job and I, of course, never married or had children—I did nothing particularly outrageous, and that was what made me ideal. I did everything my parents expected of me; I was an intelligent, hard-working, reasonably attractive, Slytherin girl; I was as good as gold; I was the ideal daughter; I was a perfect lady of the house of Black.

And for what? Where did any of that get me?

I was often surprised that my parents never pushed me to get married and only recently have I begun to make sense of it all.

My eldest brother, Pollux, was also a respectable young man. It was him that I looked up to and in his footsteps that I followed, so it's no wonder I turned out the way I did. I was not interested in rebellion or any of that nonsense. I lived to please my parents and my family, just as my brother did.

Pollux had an arranged marriage to a vile woman of the name Irma Crabbe. I was not fond of her and her family, but she had the right breeding, and the families were thrilled with the idea of getting them together—purely for social reasons and their own family status, of course. I suppose that is why I was never fond of their children—Cygnus, Walburga, and Alphard. Walburga, of course, being the mother of Sirius, which in my opinion is the only redeeming thing about Pollux and Irma's marriage.

So that was how the lives of two of my siblings went. We do not speak of the other. He is not one of us anymore. He hasn't been a Black since he was eleven…

Marius, the third and final of my siblings, was a very peculiar case. He was my younger brother, though older than Dorea, and I would say that, of the three of them, it was he who I was closest to as a child. But everything changed.

Everything changed when he was exposed for what he was—or rather, what he wasn't. Nobody could see him in the same way after we learnt his dirty little secret.

At that age, I did not understand why he was cast from our family for what he was. I had adored him, and his disease was not something he could control—it was something he was born with. Yet he was punished for it.

Punishment came in the form of immediate disownment from the Black family. I watched as his face was burnt off of the tapestry; I watched as he bawled his eyes out whilst my mother shrieked that he was a disgrace; I watched as he was dragged, kicking and screaming, from the house, soon to be sent away to anybody who would take him.

He was no longer one of us. He was not a Black. He was not my brother.

He was a Squib.

I knew not what a Squib was at that age. It was a very rare phenomenon, especially in an as pure and noble a family as ours was. When his eleventh birthday rolled around without him showing any sign of magical potential, when he never received his Hogwarts letter later that year, when my mother sent for a professional to visit the house and diagnose what was wrong with him, I did not understand what was happening.

When the truth was discovered, my mother took no hesitations in sorting out the situation. Her reaction was immediate—Marius was out of our lives that evening. She couldn't bear for the rest of the family to know what had become of him. If it was discovered that we had a Squib amongst us, our family would be shamed by the other pure-blood families. And the Black reputation and status were far more valuable than my dear little brother. So she sent him away and made up an elaborate lie of how he'd fled from the house and run away of his own accord. Pollux, Dorea, and myself were sworn to silence.

"Let me see him," I had pleaded the night he was cast out of my life. "Let me say goodbye. I need to say goodbye!"

I was hysterical, throwing myself upon the floor in a puddle of my streaming tears. My mother had looked down upon me with disgust. "Your father and I disagree; you are forbidden."

And that was that. I never saw my brother again; I never knew where he was raised and who by; I never knew if he was married or had children. I don't even know if he's dead. I merely assume he is. After he was disowned, he may as well have been dead anyway.

I was an ideal daughter, though. I got over it quickly so as to please my parents, for fear that I too would be disowned for my attachment to the disgusting creature that my little brother was.

He could never be a wizard. His condition was rare indeed, but there was no hope for him.

So by the time I was an appropriate age to be thinking of marriage, my parents' views had changed rather drastically since when we were all very young. One of their sons had obtained a wife and was living a perfectly respectable life, worthy of the Black name. Their other son had disgraced them in such a way that he could no longer be included in their lives. They had one daughter that had slightly pushed the boundaries of what was expected of a lady from the House of Black, and therefore they needed me to be perfect, to fully uphold our name.

This is my theory for why I think they did not push me to get married or even arrange a marriage for me. They could not run the risk of having another disgrace in their family. Marius had ruined them, and Dorea was certainly pushing it. If I brought them shame, then of their four children, only one of them would have made them proud.

They knew that to pressure me too much to fulfil these responsibilities and expectations could potentially cause me to rebel, and rebellion meant shame. As long as they let me live as I was, there was no risk. I had no cause for rebellion—I was living how I thought I wanted to. It was just the way I was raised.

And that is why I lie here now, incredibly uncertain of what has become of the Blacks. Dorea died many years ago, far younger than she should have. Pollux too had passed on several years ago. Marius is a mystery to me.

My favourite nephew married a Muggle-born girl , and she bore him a particularly interesting son. Though I am expected to despise her, and though I would never admit it to anybody in my family, I was rather fond of James' wife. Lily was a lovely young woman, despite her blood status and family background, and I told James Potter that I very much approved of her. I gave them my blessing when I heard they were to be married, though I was unable to attend the wedding itself. I had an image to uphold, after all.

But now both lie as dead as my parents. I hear strange tales of their son—stories of the Dark Lord falling, and stories of this young child being the one to have conquered him. But I am far too old and frail to interest myself with such nonsense tales.

I can only assume Sirius to be as dead as James. He's been in Azkaban long enough for him to have rotted to death, and it pains me to wish him dead, but for what he did to my much-adored nephew and his delightful wife, I can never forgive him.

Everybody I love is dead, so there's not much left for me in this world. I worked so hard to uphold and maintain the Blacks' status, but every day new tales emerge of people disgracing our name—people marrying Muggle-borns, people running away, people switching their loyalty. The Black family name is crumbling around me, and for all the effort I went to uphold, I am now longing for death. My life was for nothing. I did nothing to rebel and fight for my own lifestyle, yet more and more people are doing so every day. I devoted my life to living how I was expected to, and I understand now that that is simply not a life worth living.

It is too late for me now, but I long for rebellion. I was never brave enough to live the life I wanted. If I had been braver, I may have had a husband and children.

If I had been braver, I may have had a career that I actually enjoyed.

If I had been braver, I may have gone through my life with my brother by my side.

But I was not brave. I was as good as gold; I was an ideal daughter; I was a perfect Black lady.

And so it is my dying wish that, no matter how long it takes, enough rebellion will occur for the complete destruction of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

Originally written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Season 1—Round 8

Team: Wigtown Wanderers
Position: Beater 1
Character: Cassiopeia Black
Additional Prompts: Good as gold, Rare and Dialogue: "Your father and I disagree; you are forbidden."