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Chapter 2

Walburga remembered very clearly the day that her uncle, Marius, was blasted off of the family tree. The summer after Pollux graduated, the small family of three had stayed at Black Manor with Pollux's parents and three siblings. There was Aunt Cassiopeia, who had just finished her fourth year at Hogwarts, there was Aunt Dorea, a mere five years older than Walburga, and then there was Marius. Uncle Marius, technically, but Walburga only knew him as such for one short summer.

She had just been coming to terms with the fact that everyone in that Manor was indeed her family. There was her father, an imperious man who really paid Walburga no attention. He rarely seems to talk to Irma either, but when he did it always ended in a cold exchange of rage between the two. Walburga was privy to more of those than she probably should have been, and she sometimes heard her mother crying in a secluded room after the arguments. The sound of those sobs kept ringing in Walburga's ears for the rest of her life.

There was her grandfather, Cygnus Black, who was the epitome of the Black family. He spoke constantly of blood supremacy; it was due to him that the word 'Mudblood' was in Walburga's vocabulary within the first week of her stay at Black Manor. He was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, fair-skinned and had finely chiseled features that he had passed on to all of his children. Pollux, in turn, had passed them on to his daughter, all except the eyes. Walburga had striking grey eyes that were an exact replica of Alarice's, someone who the young girl found herself missing more and more as the summer progressed.

Because Grandmother Violetta Bulstrode Black was nothing like Grandmother Alarice Crabbe. Violetta was, well, something else entirely. She constantly giggled, a high pitched noise that grated at Walburga's nerves whenever she heard it. She was rather plain-looking; limp brown hair with dull brown eyes, and she was never seen without the company of a glass of red wine. Said drink always turned Violetta's cheeks a rosy red after excessive consumption, and it always caused her to giggle all the more. Walburga later learned that Cygnus had been rather pressured into the union, seeing that Violetta had been the only respectable pureblood woman available at the time. It would certainly explain the faint trace of disgust that Walburga saw many times on her grandfather's face as he looked upon his wife. Walburga couldn't help but share the sentiment every single time she ever saw her grandmother.

Aunt Cassiopeia and Aunt Dorea were very similar to their mother, albeit they had inherited the Black look and were therefor somewhat easier on the eye. However, that partially backfired seeing that it caused Cassiopeia to be incredibly vain, and that, coupled with her Violetta-like personality, made her an absolute nightmare.

And finally, Marius. He had always been a scrawny little thing; a nervous, jittery boy whose dark hair and dark eyes against his white skin made him look sickly pale, opposed to the regality that the look brought everyone else in the family. He had turned eleven years old earlier that year, and was set to get his Hogwarts letter that summer. But it never came.

There had been whispers among the family, about how the boy had never showed an ounce of magic in his entire life, but such things were kept quiet and out of earshot of the children. They never took Marius to St Mungo's to receive an official diagnosis, even when there were still no signs at the age of seven. The Black family was too proud for that, and besides, what need was there to cause an upheaval and humiliate themselves only to find that Marius was perhaps a late bloomer.

But he wasn't. He was a Squib, and within the old Pureblood families, being a Squib was just as bad as voluntarily associating with Mudbloods and blood-traitors.

Walburga, of course, being the tender age of four, did not know of that. She had no idea that the Muggle world even existed, and she really did not understand the concept of blood purity, because, even though words such as Mudblood had been picked up from grandfather Cygnus, she did not truly understand the meaning of the word other than "a Mudblood is a bad, evil person not to be associated with". Walburga had never actually seen one of those so-called Mudbloods, but she supposed that she would be able to recognize one if she did happen to see one. After all, there had to be a visual difference between herself, who's blood ran a pure, dark, beautiful red, and a disgusting creature whose blood was mixed with mud, right?

Though Mudblood was not the word that had been hurled at Marius that day, it was very clear to Walburga that everyone else was disgusted with the young boy that stood, shaking, before his family in the parlor. Grandfather Cygnus raged for a while, his sentences very short and to the point. With every word, Marius seemed to shake harder, but nobody seemed to mind. Grandmother Violetta was clutching a glass of wine, staring at her husband and looking for the world as if she might faint.

At a particularly sharp phrase from Cygnus, she gave a soft "oh" and clutched the back of the sofa, though the fact that she never even glanced at her son made it obvious that it wasn't some deeply buried motherly affection that was causing her to act up. Probably stress about how it would all affect her reputation. Cygnus glanced at Violetta a few times during his monologue, his disgust for his son also carrying over to his wife. Later, Walburga would wonder if he blamed her for Marius' condition. After all, the Bulstrodes had never had quite the prestige to their name that the Blacks did.

Aunt Dorea stared on in shock, while Aunt Cassiopeia had a knowing look on her face that told that she had predicted that this would happen. She shot her younger sister a look, an elegant eyebrows raised, as if to say 'I told you so.' Dorea's dark eyes filled with tears, and she mutely shook her head as she watched the scene in front of her unfold.

Pollux and Irma stood side by side towards the back of the room. Pollux had an unreadable expression on his face. Where Cygnus raged and paced, Pollux merely stood tall and silent with the slightest trace of contempt on his face. He had matured very much in the past four years; a while ago he would have been brimming with passion, directed in the form of hate towards his younger brother. But his blunder four years ago had given him something he was determined to overcome; something that he was determined to prove that he was so much more than, something that he wanted to put behind him. And so he became the stoic man that Walburga knew all her life, with no traces of the playboy left that her mother had encountered while still attending Hogwarts.

Irma was gripping Walburga's hand rather tightly, wearing a bemused expression. To an outside observer, it would seem as if she were an aloof lady of the Black family. To anyone that knew her -in that parlor, really only Pollux did, because, despite all their complications, he still knew her- it was quite obvious that she would rather be anywhere else than in the parlor of Black Manor listening to the affairs of the family.

This was certainly not the last time that Walburga saw that expression on her mother's face, but nothing was ever said about it (except perhaps by Pollux, but that was always behind the confines of closed doors where no one could hear his admonishing or her protests and tears) for she did her job well enough.

Though Irma was not one to rant and rave about blood purity, she would instill the words Toujours Pur well into her children. To the eyes of the public, Irma would remain the cold and quiet Lady Black for the rest of her life. It was only when Walburga was much, much older that she would be able to see the desperation and pain in her mother's eyes that always led her to choke out the words, as if they were a meaningless mantra that served the only purpose of keeping her grounded.

Though it was always said to Walburga or one of her brothers as a sort of reminder from their mother, it later seemed more of a reminder to Irma herself of who she was expected to be. In the final years of Walburga's life, when she was left with only memories of all the people in her life, all either gone or beyond her reach, she couldn't help but wonder if Irma had ever actually, really believed in Toujours Pur.

But that day, Irma's whisper of Toujours Pur in her daughter's ear was not born from an emotion of desperate need to give one's self a feeling of purpose. It was an explanation to the look of confusion on Walburga's face when she saw Grandfather Cygnus point his wand at the tapestry of the family tree and heard a loud crack, all of it resulting in a charred black hole between the faces of Aunt Cassiopeia and Aunt Dorea.

The family, with the family tree as it's visual representation, was not an ever-changing unit, with members coming and going at a whim. Or that was as Walburga understood it. But now, as she watched her grandfather roughly drag the openly crying Marius to the door, she did not know what to think of the word "family" anymore.

Though the words Toujours Pur did not exactly explain it all, as she did not entirely know what it meant, it did tell her that there was something wrong with Marius, something that was a way that it shouldn't be. And that was enough for Walburga.

She did not understand that her uncle, a mere eleven year old child, was going to be thrown out onto the streets, exiled from his family. Walburga only saw the scrawny boy that she had never really liked, and felt satisfaction at the idea of never having to see him again. Because, though she had no clear comprehension of how horrible the situation was for Marius, she just knew in her gut that she would never see her uncle ever again.

There was no particular reason for the venom that Walburga had always felt towards Marius; it was merely an unexplainable, childish dislike that stemmed purely from the fact that he had always been different.

Over the years, that childish dislike directed at people that were different would grow and fester into a fearsome, all-consuming hate.