Author's Note:
Justin: And… Tequila's love affair with the Family Black continues…
Tequila: but they're so—so AWESOME!!
Justin: Well, yes, they are rather awe inspiring, in a terrible sort of way.
Tequila: --pouts--
Disclaimer: Pfft. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black is waaay too hot to be owned by a couple of silly muggles… ditto for the rest of the Harry Potter franchise.
Burnt Out
The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black was the oldest pureblooded family in Britain—the oldest one left, anyway.
There had been others, there had been many others: the Peverells, the Burkes, the Weasleys, the Ludwicks, the Slytherins, but they had all been lost—married Mudbloods, died out, dispersed into the distaff line. Of course there were a few left, even a few pureblooded ones, but it was the name that mattered. It was growing up wearing the crest and knowing the motto and having it drilled into you that you were a Black. Always.
There were traditions, there were some things that no one could understand unless they were raised with it—a certain way of doing things that had survived thousands of years. Through flood and fire, to hell and back again, the Blacks had been there and stood through each test.
And now they were gone… now they were lost. They had burned and drowned and been lost along the road to hell, and the last one left was not even a Black at all.
How had it come to this? What madness twisted through the line of the Blacks, what fire burned in them that could not be contained by mortality? They blazed too bright to live on earth, they shone like the stars they were named for, and like those stars they fell. They fell and they fell and they fell.
And now the only two left who ever bore the name, who carried the soul and the heart and the blaze, were both growing older and growing apart. And neither of them burned as brightly as the ones who had fallen.
Andromeda Tonks, née Black, raised her grandson as best as she could, raised him to be a Lupin and a Tonks and Potter and a Black, because that was the only way she knew how to raise anyone. A mixed-breed child, a mixed-family child, a child with too much heritage. But there was a fire in him, a fire she'd seen burn in her older sister's eyes, and that frightened her, sometimes. But it was tempered with a Lupin sort of intellectual intensity, and a Tonks sort of calm curiosity, and a Potter kind of gritty determination, and it worked for the best. It made him smolder, instead of blaze, but the fire was there and he used it, and she loved him for it. She told him stories, the ones her mother had told her, stories about wizards and witches of long ago, who'd burned and bled and made the world something different. She included his parents, his godfather, all of his family—but mostly, she included the Blacks. And Teddy Lupin grew up knowing that he was a Black, no matter what it said on a tapestry, no matter what it said on his birth certificate, no matter what it said anywhere, because Blacks were blood and fire and he had both.
Narcissa Malfoy, née Black, raised her son as a Malfoy, because her husband would never let her do anything else. And to be a Malfoy was a fine thing, but it was a thing of ice and persuasion, of calculating, smirking success. It had none of the flame and failure and desperation and power that the Blacks held, but it was what her husband wanted. So she watched her son retreat into himself, and whenever she could she nourished some of the flame that she could see buried deep in him. And it was there, just quiet and smothered, just subtle and hidden. But when her grandson was born, then she could fan the flames into a blaze. He was a Greengrass, and a Chevaliere, and they were quicksilver and manganese, and when that combined with the Malfoy's ice and the Black's fire, it was awesome and terrible to behold. He danced on flames and spun with the stars and he was strong, stronger than she had been, stronger than her son had been, stronger than he needed to be, in all probability. But Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy was the last of the Blacks—and oh, how it ached that she would be the last to truly carry the name, the beautiful, scorching, untouchable name—and the Blacks would go out in a blaze of glory. And blaze he did.
When Scorpius Malfoy married Rose Weasley, his grandmother did her best to smile, did her best to nod and accept and understand. And Narcissa Malfoy, née Black, really did like the Weasley girl, who was part Black anyway—how ironic—and had a sort of cool intellectual spark that would fit with the fire in her grandson, and when she wept at the wedding, it was from joy. But later that night, when she locked herself in her parlor and wept again, it was from sorrow. Because Rose Weasley was a halfblood, and Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy would be the last of the Blacks.