Author's Note: I know, I know. Two chapters in one day. I don't have school this week so this isn't going to be a regular thing. I'm definitely having fun writing again.

Nov 1959

Everyone knows the Blacks are crazy. Not all of them, but every generation there would be a crazy or two to remind the other pure bloods to stay away. It never worked of course. Marrying a Black, in the pure blood world was akin to marrying into the royal family in the Muggle world. Obviously there are eligible Blacks than eligible royals but the point still stands.

Walburga and Orion Black were both crazy. It hadn't always been that way. Lucretia remembered that her brother had been a perfectly delightful child. Her little brother has comforted her when their mother died and he had grown to be a genuinely good person. (He had some funny ideas about "blood purity" but then most of her family. Lucretia was the exception and not the rule.) But then Walburga got her claws into him.

It was 1947 and Orion was 18-years-old. He had just graduated from Hogwarts. He had never been a good student and had mediocre grades. Their father saw this as a failure but Lucretia didn't care about silly things like that.

Walburga was 22. She had scored top marks on her OWLs but her parents wouldn't allow her to continue her education. (In those days pure blood girls were discouraged to continue learning. Thank Merlin Lucretia's father didn't think that way.) It made her bitter.

Lucretia knew that not all crazy people are born crazy. Sometimes there is a trigger, something that causes a person to just snap. Walburga didn't have a trigger; she was just born that way.

They had met at a party hosted by Walburga's parents. Lucretia didn't like the way Walburga was following her brother around. They had been in the same year at Hogwarts and there and always been something off about Walburga. Lucretia has never been able to put her finger on it but it was definitely there.

Lucretia wanted to go over and intervene but she got caught up in a conversation with Ignatius Prewett. She didn't even notice they had left until Cygnus made a snide comment about his sister's virtue.

They were married two months later (Lucretia and her father had not been invited). It had all gone downhill from there.

The couple claimed they were moving quickly because they were in love. Lucretia suspected it was to get her away from Orion, so that Walburga could replace her. Lucretia suspected that because she knew how Walburga thought. Everything was a game to her, something that could be won or lost, depending on how you played.

Lucretia saw that her brother was changing but she didn't know how to stop it. Maybe there was nothing she could have done. Maybe Orion had been doomed since that first night.

Orion started to make excuses for not seeing her. It had been a rough night at work or he had plans with his friends from Hogwarts. Lucretia was not a stupid woman. She knew that Walburga was making him say those things. Soon she discovered that Walburga was reading their letters and listening in on their conversations. Eventually she was cut off from Orion entirely.

1959. Twelve years after Walburga stole her brother and turned him into a monster.

She saw him every once in a while at the Ministry. He always looked busy and important and he never had time for his nag of an older sister. Mostly she read about him in the papers. He was trying to do things like end Muggle Studies at Hogwarts and make homosexuality punishable by life in Azkaban (at the time the sentence was five years). He succeeded with the latter. Of course, it was overturned just a few days later.

Lucretia knew that they had recently had a son, Sirius, named after Orion's grandfather (Walburga's great uncle). It bothered her that two horrible people had a son while she and Ignatius didn't.

The sisters had a new cousin.

"Look! He's so precious!" exclaimed Druella, the sister's mother.

Andy discreetly rolled her eyes. Her mother didn't' fit in with all the other pure-blood mothers. She had a tendency to blurt out everything that popped into her head. When the other mothers were discussing Cedrella Black's marriage to Septimus Weasley (which was old news but there had been a lack of things to gossip about lately) she had said, "Who cares! As long as they love each other. It's not like it affects our lives!" At six-years-old, even Andy knew that was almost as scandalous as the marriage had been.

She couldn't care less about the baby. So what if Aunt Walburga and Uncle Orion had a new son? It wouldn't affect her life.

4-year-old Narcissa wanted to play with her dolls. The story was just starting to get interesting. The Mummy doll was about to discover that the Daddy doll was actually a Muggle. Narcissa wasn't really sure what that word meant, but she knew that it was very bad. A few months ago, when she asked her father, he said that Muggles were dirty animals that looked like witches and wizards but were really horrible savages. Narcissa had had nightmares for weeks afterwards. That was the last time she asked her father anything. From then on she only asked her mum, Andy, or Bella.

She thought that the baby looked ugly. The Baby doll was much cuter.

Bella was more interested than her sisters. A baby! She had thought that her aunt and uncle were too old to have a baby. She now realized that Walburga was only four years older than her father, and Uncle Orion was the same age. They just didn't seem like the type of people to have a baby. Uncle Orion was always at work trying to change the world killing one Muggle at a time. Aunt Walburga was always at pure-blood parties showing off her vintage bottles of firewhiskey and bragging about how much money her husband made last year. Bella didn't think that her father was a good parent, but she loved her mother.

Bella knew why Aunt Walburga had come here with the baby. She didn't want it. She was going to make Druella take care of it. It was a dirty trick, but Bella knew it would make her mother happy, so she didn't really care.

It would almost be like having a baby brother.