I do not own Harry Potter.
"You all disgust me!" Uncle Alphard suddenly cried, breaking the pregnant silence in the hallway.
Everyone looked at him. Uncle Alphard was shaking, madder than I had ever seen him. "You . . . you . . . you just kicked out my daughter!"
Mummy snarled, renewing the anger that had just recently melted into spiteful calm, "She allowed that scum to corrupt her--"
"She was in love!" Uncle Alphard cried. "If she was willing to carry his child of her own free will . . . just because you don't approve of his bloodline! You don't even know him! I'm sure any boy that my daughter could love so wholly would receive my blessing, regardless of his bloodline!"
"Control yourself, Alphard," Father barked, growing stern.
"You haven't been in a different House than your family; you don't know what it's like to hear different points of view. You wallow in the same old traditions, destroying yourself in them! You have no respect for what might be out there! Andromeda did, Sirius did . . . I did, I just let myself fall back into this rotten conservatism! And, Merlin, how jealous I am that the two of them-- both of them-- had the strength to leave it! You--" he pointed to Aunt Elladora, whose eyes were wide, "-- you have never loved me, I was just the younger son of a fine line, the best the third daughter of a second son could have, and my being a Ravenclaw was just something you would put up with for the bloodline." He pointed to my parents, "You two certainly don't love each other. You've got a precious little collusion going on-- two Dark minds combined as one-- but minds alone! No heart!" He began to wave his hands, "Bella only married Rodolphus because it was convenient. Narcissa doesn't give a damn about anybody, Regulus has never loved anyone; they don't even care that their sister and brother are forever removed from their lives, look at them!" He glared at Narcissa and I that I felt my blood run cold; he carried some of Father's genes.
"Andromeda loved me!" Uncle Alphard cried desperately. "Andromeda loved that boy! She was capable of it; she indulged in it. And I have no doubt that if Sirius had ever been showed love-- not privilege, not birthright, not punishment-- he wouldn't have been half so eager to leave. And now . . . now, dammit," his eyes filled with tears, "you've taken away from me the only people who have ever loved me! Narcissa and Bellatrix never gave a damn about me. Ella, you never cared, either.
"I pity Andromeda because I understand what is like to be Sorted Ravenclaw in a Slytherin family-- and I pity Sirius because I know what it is like to be alone in a House. No . . . no, I don't pity them. I respect them. They are strong. And they are lucky. Sirius has great friends; they took him in and gave him a better home than he knew here. He'll go on to do great things he never could have dreamed of here. Andromeda, she'll find love with this boy, she'll marry this boy, and she'll be HAPPY. She'll have a family based in love, not blood! Me . . . it's too late for me, for I sat back and allowed my family to force me into their own ways, never daring to break free and achieve what I really wanted! And now, my only comforts gone, I have nothing left to live for! For you, Cissa? You, Ella? You give me no fulfillment."
He took out his wand and held it up resolutely. "You left those most important to me absolutely nothing. They deserve more than that. I leave," he took a deep breath, "half my estate to Andromeda, half to Sirius." A small white puff emitted from his wand and wisped away into the nearest fireplace, as if Flooing to his estate. "Ella, you can live off my brother; Merlin knows they have enough for you. Narcissa, you'll be fine; you'll marry into a high family. That's all you've ever wanted, isn't it?"
He raised his wand to his head, pointing it directly to his temple as if saluting. I felt the breath leave me. Narcissa's face was so pale it was translucent. Only Aunt Elladora was audible; she gasped.
He took one last look around at all of us. "Oh, you don't care. As soon as I'm gone, you'll forget I ever lived, that I was ever in the family, just as you did with Andromeda and Sirius. AVADA KEDAVRA!"
There was a blinding flash of green light; I turned my eyes away. Alphard's body fell rigidly to the floor. Aunt Elladora screamed. Mummy, however, alighted with madness.
"So that's where the corruption comes from. That's the seat of our problems," she drew in a great heaving breath and jerked her head up. "Is that all? Is there anyone else who would like to come forward to renounce their pure blood? I'm only making one more trip upstairs!"
"Oh, don't!" Aunt Elladora cried. "Not my husband! Your husband's brother! Please! The shame!"
"Better out than in, Ella. This man just disparaged you and left you nothing! He does not deserve this!" She seemed to be swelling with an inexpressible anger. "Blood traitors . . . deep-rooted subversion . . . filth . . . degenerate minds of purest blood . . . " she puffed out insults like the Hogwarts Express did steam. Finally, she turned and dashed back into the trophy with the speed of one ready to vomit.
When Narcissa and Aunt Elladora went to go home, they found their Floo entrance blocked; their house had disappeared, vanished into gold in Sirius's and Andromeda's accounts, no doubt. Narcissa, for the first time in her life, showed emotion. She screamed at the loss of her possessions, all the dresses in her closet, her lacy bedspread, her vanity and mirror. She screamed, too, for her lost father-- but, it seemed, that was an afterthought. Aunt Elladora consoled her, promising her that my father would be sure to buy her plenty new dresses.
Narcissa moved into Sirius's room. It gave me a terrible itch to know she was in there. The empty room had not bothered me, but what if I woke up in the middle of the night, in an uncontrolled sleepwalk, and revealed my assistance in Sirius's flight? I could tell when Narcissa was awake, just as I had with Sirius, but it was different, wrong. She wasn't meant to be in his room.
The rumors spread like wildfire as school started again in January. No one had suspected Andromeda as a point of subversion in our family. It was all hushed up about Uncle Alphard, of course; he had died of a heart attack. Yet Andromeda was living, breathing, pregnant proof of what she had done. She was married to the Tonks boy by February, her belly bulging more than ever.
Narcissa and I were forced to bear the shame of this, but our companions were sympathetic. "Tonks corrupted her. She was only a young girl; it was our duty to defend her from the prying Muggle-borns, always ready to destroy our pure womenhood," Rabastan had comforted me. "You were her cousin, but I was her brother in-law's brother, and I did nothing, either. It's too bad she had no choice in the matter; we could have taken care of Tonks and brought her back."
I held my tongue that she had wanted to go.
Narcissa seemed to deal very poorly with this. She had been fond of Andromeda, just as fond as she was of Bellatrix. "You always properly hated Sirius," she said to me, which wasn't true but she of course didn't know. "You're lucky for that. Andromeda . . . I can't help feeling like I should have been able to save her."
Her emotional instability led her into Lucius Malfoy's comfort, who consoled her with compliments of her superiority, her beauty, her purity, and a promise that she would never fall into such a way as her wayward cousin. I suspected for a time that Narcissa might even have been taking things further than her modesty would formally have permitted-- in essence, going the way of Andromeda though with a purer vessel. Luckily for her, though, she had no such tangible evidence as Andromeda did.
Now that another generation had graduated, the meetings between us became more and more defined as actual meetings. It was not common room chat anymore, nor was it Hog's Head meeting. Our gatherings were events. We met, black-cloaked and silent, secretly within the Forbidden Forest. Those that knew how to Apparate helped the others. Barty and I, still the youngest, were constantly being assisted, unable to even perform magic at the gatherings for fear of being detected for Underage Wizardry.
Yet our cause was growing. Augustus Rookwood had landed a job at the Ministry, working his way up through by working his pureblood privilege with those who took it-- and a little bit of blackmail by Lucius Malfoy, whose father had connections, knew the worst secrets of everyone, and allowed his son free access of it. None of us had any true need to work, we were only doing society a service. Bellatrix spent her days at the Lestrange manor, but, from the way Rodolphus told it, she was anything but a housewife. There was no sign of a child a year into their marriage, and, the Lestrange parents still alive, there was little for Bellatrix to do anyway. So she and her husband spent their days freely wreaking havoc wherever they wanted: influencing the Ministry with the Lestrange's endless supply of money and power, assisting Lucius in digging up information (which Bellatrix found frightfull boring), and even arranging subtle underground campaigns to recruit more members. There was a large movement growing in the Transylvanian regions, as well, prompted by a similar crackdown on the Dark Arts that were even more prominant there, and Bellatrix found Igor Karkaroff, a Bulgarian living in England, to serve as a connection to Lord Voldemort for his people.
Barty, however, had other ideas about how my grown cousin could be spending her time.
"Do you think it's unhealthy to still be infatuated with a married woman?" he asked me hesitantly one day. "I didn't want to try anything before she was married, because that's not how things work, but now that she's married . . . if Rodolphus didn't know . . . "
I couldn't help it; I smashed him soundly across the face. He drew back, gasping raggedly. "Great Circe's girdle! Ouch, Regulus!"
"Don't talk that way about my cousin."
Barty blushed furiously. "Dammit, Regulus! Half the reason I joined . . . " he spluttered. "You know something?" he breathed in deeply. "I never had a chance with her, ever. Because your family frowns on mine. You know why they frown on me? Because my dad's a filthy bloodtraitor. I didn't choose him to be that way, but he is . . . he's shamed the entire family, our entire pure bloodline, to the point that we're as low as halfblood and Muggle-borns. That's shot everything for me." He was shaking with anger.
"Barty, I can't help you with Bellatrix, but if you move with the Dark Lord, you're bound to get some glory back to your name. He's going to resurrect the Snape family again, too."
Barty sighed. "I still can't help what I feel."
"Loving isn't exactly part of our culture," I teased. "Perhaps you are a lower line."
Barty locked his arm around my neck, wrestling me, but playfully. "Haven't you ever got any of those urges?"
"No," I said, wrestling him back. We fell laughing to the floor. It was partially true; I was much better than Barty was, apparently, at suppressing those feelings. I knew I would have a wife eventually; I just had to wait until my parents arranged one for me.
Yet part of me wondered if Bellatrix was as pure as I thought, in my mind that ever-glorified my family. She seemed very, very attached to the Dark Lord, who reciprocated it clearly, calling her to his side even more often that Lucius Malfoy or Rodolphus Lestrange, the two other founders. It clearly made Barty even more jealous.
He began to become particularly involved in the cause as if showing off for Bellatrix. The Dark Lord suggested that the younger members be drilled in various curses and hexes to ensure our power, and Barty, taught by Bellatrix everything from the Stinging Hex to the Cruciatus, was a particularly avid student.
Andromeda's baby was born at the end of my 4th year, just before her graduation. She started going into labor during her Divination exam-- which she passed by announcing she was going to have a baby, and, seconds later, breaking her water. I felt for the first time the true separation of us. I had always assumed I would be present when one of my cousins had their first baby, but I was not even invited to the humble hospital birth of Nymphadora Tonks. I didn't even know her name until Rabastan got a Quidditch injury and he could emerge with the news.
"She's a Metamorphagus," he told me. "I didn't see, but I heard a bunch of her friends going on and on about it. Apparently the kid was born looking like Andromeda and about ten seconds later had transformed into a girl version of Tonks. It's crazy."
I was bitten with jealously; Metamorphagi were rare, and we actually had one in our family-- but she would never be considered a Black. How ironic it was that the purest marriage resulted in no such luck.
Yet I allowed Andromeda to pass from my mind. She left the school as Mrs. Tonks, wife and mother, and no cousin of mine. I never saw her again.
Besides, I had much greater things on my mind. Just before 5th year, when I should have been assigned prefect or Quidditch captain and been ready to start studying for my OWLs, I joined into a much greater organization.