A/N: Don't own it. Never did. Doubt I ever will. . .
I am more like them than I care to admit.
I was conditioned for years, taught that I was above others because of the blood than runs in my veins and the name that was attached to my persona.
After hearing the mantra for so many generations, it becomes second nature to you. You begin to hear it in your sleep, the walls pulsing out a gentle cadence of purity and pomposity that pounds into your brain until you believe, unerringly.
Toujours Pur.
This belief was much easier to maintain when I was younger, before the years started accumulating and I became the woman you see before you. In truth, we didn't know any better, but neither did we look for other answers to the unasked questions. Ignorance was definitely bliss in those days.
The three of us grew up with every imaginable luxury. Anything that we could possibly ask for could, and would, be brought before us with alacrity. A crup puppy? Done. A new silk dress? Done. Bellatrix once asked for the head of the new house elf, saying Auntie Elladora would have wanted to have an even number mounted on the wall. She got that as well, after the poor creature finished sharpening the axe himself.
Andromeda was appalled by the action, but I saw nothing wrong with this behavior. She was a Black. She had every right to anything she wanted.
Black women are born and bred to be wedded into powerful and affluent families. We are provided with the best clothes so that we may be more attractive to the untrained eye. We receive the best education, so that we may appear witty and charming, deceiving those around us into believing we are human.
It is all a facade. We are the classic example of beauty only being skin deep. The Black family tree has been rotting for generation upon generation, it's putrefying branches twisting more with each year.
Somehow Andromeda and Sirius realized this long before their time was due and before it was too late to escape the fate our family had in store for us. Somehow, they knew, but didn't share the secret.
Bellatrix and Regulus, however. . . they upheld the family "honor" veraciously and without fail. Regulus died for the beliefs of our predecessors. Bellatrix has been sent back to Azkaban, which is tantamount to a death sentence as well.
Azkaban. Lucius. . .
I truly think he loved me at one point in time. He wasn't always the man he is today, as surely as I am not the woman he married. We have grown apart since I stopped being the demure disciple he so craves.
I can't be that woman any more, as much as I covet the thoughtless existence I had believed intrinsic to my bloodline. I have a son who's future I must secure and a family I must sustain on my own.
I have seen what The Dark Lord has to offer and am nonplussed with what rewards my family received by his hands.
Though we have long been amalgamated with The Dark Lord, I see no other option than to disassociate myself with him and his followers and to see that my son does the same.
It is a wonderful conundrum, really. In order to save my family, I must break with my family. To secure my future I must abolish my past.
How very audacious of me. How astonishingly like a Gryffindor I find myself. . .
How profoundly like Andromeda and Sirius I have become.