You are the perfect one: the highest grades, the sweetest smile, the most friends. You are not necessarily popular in your quiet way but everyone loves you. The teachers smile.
You walk tall, proud, smile smile smile. It is redundant. Get over yourself; you're just a little arsonist. You can't save them.
And everyone loves you, or at least likes you. You are better than your sister the Queen Bee of Selfish Flowers, than your sister Lady of the Night. They are weeds (though Narcissa is disguised cleverly) and you are the blossom, the Rose Among Girls.
At least that is what your mother believes.
Need a lip gloss boost, hold on.
Ready.
Mommy hugs you and tells you secrets and is practically your best friend, a radical change from all of your associates. She taught you how to make cookies (because even the house elves are nothing compared to her) and how to mix complicated potions, and you giggle with her about Boys, and Teachers, and Other Important Things.
And Daddy sits with his newspaper, and his pipe, and is ignored, because even his wife hates him (Cousin Sirius is the only one who likes him).
And your sisters.
You are the middle, the lonely forgotten middle, the bane of families (though you think yours isn't half-bad). Books have it wrong; the middle is the best.
Bella the Oldest is haughty and beautiful, with straight shining inky black hair (like Narcissa, though Cissa is blonde), and heavy lidded liquid eyes that peer at you suspiciously. She is good at Transfiguration, hopeless on a broomstick, and has a weakness for Fizzing Whizbees. She rarely talks to you, but when she does, it is wonderful: great big juicy secrets divulged at midnight giggling under the covers, and tall tales she makes up on the spot and charges everyone but you two Sickles for. She is the one who explained the Curse that awful autumn eve, and who hooked you up with Horace Zabini, who you dated for two straight years before calling it quits. She is silent muscle wet hair and tears and soap and stories. She is you older sister.
Narcissa is pale and beautiful in her own crystalline way. She plays the piano beautifully. She hates boys, and has never dated one in her life, and probably never will. Her favorite subject is Charms and she is an avid Quidditch follower, and spends entire vacations discussing teams with your uncle. She is painfully thin, and is jealous of Bella's curves. You taught Cissa how to read, and comforted her when she fractured her ankle. In turn, she has provided you with years of hid-and-go-seek, let's-capture-the-castle, and all of her yucky Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. You sneak her adventure stories from the library, careful to avoid your mother's disapproving eye, and whenever one of you has a packet of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, you always split it, no matter what, and have a bubble blowing contest (Cissa always wins). She is bones and sticky little girl kisses and pure juvenile fun that Bella never had. She is your little sister.
Your family is perfect, you think, but the facade starts to crumble in your last year of Hogwarts.
There are an increasing number of fights with your mother, and Narcissa won't talk to you and only plays piano all day, and Bella doesn't communicate with the family much anymore, and Sirius stole your first kiss, and you cried in your pillow that night, and his little friend Remus has a crush on you (this is embarrassing, and Reggie continually tells him to bug off, that brave little boy), and you have had the worst cramps in your entire life, and your best friend Stacey has severed all ties from you and spread that rumor that you let Timothy Philips, the laughingstock of the school, into your pants (which is NOT true).
And there is your Big Secret that no one can find out.
Your Potions partner, Ted Tonks, had started looking cuter and cuter every day, and last week you both went to Hogsmeade (together) and had tea and cookies and held hands and oh! it felt so wonderful.
He is Muggle-born. A Mudblood. Your mother would go bonkers. Your aunt would froth at the mouth. Bella would kill you. And Cissa would continue playing piano, and get even more antisocial.
It feels so good, though.
No, Andie. No.
But you bite your lip, cause you know he is The One that all the old teen magazines of Bella's talk about excitedly. (Don't ask how you know, you just do). And you are now Officially Dating.
And you mother can never, ever, ever
find
out.
Because if she did, you would be killed for sure, and she would kick you out of the family.
And that would be the worst thing that could ever happen to you, because family is what being a Black is about.