Chapter Two: My Mysteries


I grew up being told that I was a daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. I never quite understood what this meant, but I knew that it must be important. The one thing I did know was that it meant that I was special, somehow secretly better than everybody else. I was always sure that this was a good thing, but I never quite knew what I was supposed to do with this knowledge.

But if it means that my family and I are different from everybody else, then it is certainly true. My childhood was not a particularly pleasant one, nor was my family a particularly loving one. But it was all that I knew, and I never thought to question it.

I grew up in a large house, one of the many that had belonged to the family of Black for centuries. It was very ostentatious and grand, but at the same time overwhelmingly cold and dark. It was like always being in a dark, haunted museum at nighttime, and it made me feel so much like that that I, still a very young girl, would wander its halls as a lost child in a strange place, looking for some small form of comfort.

If there was ever anything that I wanted or needed, my parents were not the ones to turn to. They were always distant at best, and sometimes they would do things, scary things, that made me wish I could disappear.

My mother was not the maternal sort at all, and nothing that I ever did could catch her attention. At times she would dote upon or admire my sisters, but I, the middle child, never seemed worthy of note. Most often she paid no attention to any of us at all– she would lock herself away for long periods of time, and we never knew if she would come out again. I did not ever discover what haunted her and caused her to torture herself so, but even then I had learned enough about life as a Black to know to keep out of the way and not ask questions.

My father, on the other hand, was always present. He was a loud man with a very thin temper, and was known to lose himself and give into impulsive fits of violence in which my sisters and I could became the victims. He was quite a bit older than my mother. Of course, my parents were not the types to talk of their pasts, but they made the mistake of underestimating the deductive skills of their daughter. And of not keeping all of their documents behind locked doors. I have discovered that, although my father was of age, it appears that his our mother was only thirteen years old when she had his first daughter and seventeen when the third arrived. In fact, it looks to me as if the moment she was old enough to consider having children, he decided that it was a good time to stop. What's more, I have for some time suspected that, from an out of place tone or a significant glance, that the youngest of my sisters may not have actually come from him at all. Though of course, I do not dare mention this suspicion to anybody.

With such unpredictable parents, my sisters and I were left more or less to our own devices. Of course, we had the rest of the household keeping their eyes us, but we nevertheless had a great deal of freedom to do as we pleased.

If this suited any of us, it was Bellatrix. She was my older sister by two years and my constant role model. She was the most independent person that I had ever known, and she was absolutely fascinating to be around.

She was the kind of girl who always wanted to know more about everything. As a child she would… experiment. She would try anything and everything, hungry for a more complete knowledge of her surroundings. In her mind the only way to become superior to anything (be it a person, an animal, or even an object) was to understand it completely. She would do whatever it took to accomplish this, and accomplish it she would. She learned a great deal, though she would sometimes push the boundaries a little too far, even when she knew the dangers of the consequences.

When it seemed that there was nothing more for her to study and understand, she turned to deeper psychological issues. She briefly investigated many different aspects of human emotions and the like, but the one thing that fascinated her above all else was the deepest issue of all: why people suffered.

She pursued this for years, and for the first time she began to frighten me. Sometimes when she was researching I found an alarming glow radiating from her eyes that I had never seen before. I didn't want to lose her, but when I saw that startling look in her eyes I could feel that she was drawing further and further away from me all of the time.

It seemed that she finally found her answer to the question that she had been pursuing for so long, and I thought that it would at last stop. But it didn't end there.

At long last she seemed to deduce that people were the cause of their own suffering, and that whatever they suffered was a result of their own actions. She also acquired a very strong, perhaps somewhat perverse, sense of justice. I think that she saw it as her personal responsibility to see that anybody who did wrong received their just punishment.

She started out with small things. She would find any animal. Sometimes it was a dog off the street or a rat, or even our house elf. She would watch them for hours like a silent predator. No matter how long it took she would stay there until they committed some small act of misbehavior. Then, quite simply, she would hurt them. She would cause them the suffering that they had evidently brought upon themselves, and it gave her the greatest satisfaction to hear the whimpers of the animal as they tried to escape from her grasp.

She loved this sense of power that she was able to establish for herself, and took great pride in telling herself that she was doing what must be done, not allowing any evil deed to go unpunished.

But it did not stop there. Just as she had run out of things to investigate in her experiments, she now began to run out of victims to punish, and the thrill of hurting a small animal was not enough for her any more.

She never dared lay a finger on my sister and I or any other Wizarding children whose parents could get her into trouble. Instead, she would creep out of the house and find the muggle children playing on the street who we had been strictly forbidden to see, and draw them away to become her victims, just as she had done to the small and helpless animals she had previously delighted in torturing

As the years went on she was always somehow able to find new victims, who she punished most severely for any misconduct that she could find in them. In time her sense of wrong in others broadened, and it was not long before she found it justifiable to punish her victims whenever they so much as disagreed with her or tried to disobey.

I was not blind as this disturbing wave of corruption began to wash over her, and I watched in horror as my sister who I looked up to so much became quite something else. I was terrified and wanted my Bella back. She had been the best role model I ever had, and it hurt me to see her go like this.

Sometimes when I was so taken over by fear for the acts of my sister, she would come to me with the same sense of power and firm confidence that she had gained through all of this, which I came to both admire and fear.

I swear to you, she never laid a finger on me. But she would make me feel guilty. She called me a coward and a weakling and a disgrace. She told me I shouldn't be afraid of power. She told me that what she had was the best possible gift a person could have. She would tell me many things, and in no time at all would have me convinced that it was me who was in the wrong, not her.

After these episodes she regained my wavering trust for a short period, and I would again look up to her. As wrong as I know it is, I think that a part of me secretly wanted to feel the same taste of power that she did. I do not believe that I ever did, for I would always hold myself back just enough to keep out of any real danger. I wanted to be like her and make her proud, but something inside of me seemed to know that it was not the right path, and I always managed to pull myself out of anything that could lead me to sink to the same depths as her. My lifelong balance of toeing the line and being torn between the worst of both sides, however, may have been just as bad.

My younger sister, Narcissa, was a different story altogether. I have already expressed my suspicion that she is not the true daughter of our father, Cygnus, and yet even that does not quite agree with with his attitude towards her. To put it bluntly, he just about worshiped the girl, showering her with every luxury that a person could wish for. And it was us, his doubtlessly legitimate daughters, who he rarely bothered to waste his attentions on.

My feeling for the matter stops there. I do not feel any envy towards my younger sister, and had no desire at all to take her place. I am merely astonished that my father loved this girl who may well not even be of his own blood more than his actual daughters. But then again, why should it come as such a surprise? Anybody who saw young Narcissa could easily think that she was at very least some kind of apparition of a goddess on earth.

And yes, she truly was beautiful. To tell the truth, I have never seen anything quite like her. She was always the jewel of the family, and even our mother would dote upon her every now and again.

Not only was she the most beautiful, but she was also the youngest daughter of the house, and therefore was constantly under our watch. I think we must all have been afraid to lose her, because we certainly protected her with the strength and fear of those aware that their treasure could be snatched away at any moment.

And it all suited her just fine. She would sit regal in a little gown and run her fingers through her long, beautiful sheet of hair with a glitter in her eyes that enchanted everybody so effortlessly.

But she was not just a doll as so many people liked to think. Bellatrix and I may have been the only ones who ever knew what lay behind her façade of beauty and charm. It was no monster or beast like the one that I was beginning to see emerge behind my older sister's eyes, and yet something that may well be more devouring. It was fear. She had none of the powerful confidence of our sister, and instead lived a life of constant fear of being severely wounded by the unprotected outside world, be it emotionally or physically.

We never wanted anybody to see our sister's weakness. If they did then it could only be used against her. We couldn't bear to see her hurt, and we knew that she would not be able to protect herself. Luckily, she had her entire family there to faithfully protect her, her parents because they so adored her and her sisters because they knew what a danger the world was.

Narcissa was never able to break free of her fear, and it became more and more consuming as she grew older. She disconnected herself from everybody, even us. She was so afraid of being hurt that she would contentedly confine her entire existence to sitting at her window seat, staring down at the world safely through her own beautiful reflection.

And what of me, the second black daughter, with that name of names, Andromeda? Well, I suppose that is the true mystery. My story is really one of a lost girl in search of an identity. Sometimes I do not know if I will ever find it. Sometimes I wonder if it is even worth the search. But I do know that without it, I am nothing.

How does one go about finding an identity? It is an interesting question. I am constantly surrounded by people who are all so certain of whom they are. My parents are both too old to change and obviously comfortable in their station in life. My sisters both have such strongly set characteristics and personalities that I feel more lost between them.

And so I, the middle child, am a mystery to myself. Stuck between the two extremely different personalities and characters of my sisters, I am lost. I know not where to turn. I lose track of who and what I am. I lose track of the world around me, and the most fundamental truths are blurred. What is good? What is evil? What about right and wrong? Is there even any distinction at all, or do they simply cease to exist, lost in life's greater puzzle?

These are the mysteries of my life. Other children or women may not have any problem knowing who they are, what they are meant to do, or even the all consuming matter of good versus evil.

But these are the questions that have shaped my life.