AN: So I've been to London now, and I loved the dinos! I meant to make this story longer, but the previous chapter just fulfilled everything I truly wanted from Harris's plotline and this chapter… I am so satisfied, I can only hope you enjoyed it as well.

Chapter 24 - Dinosaurs

"Pst."

Harris hummed.

"Harris."

He hummed again, a bit louder.

She poked his cheek, "Harry?"

He sighed, opening his eyes to look up at Bella who was sitting up in bed, her hair waterfalling around her, the morning light illuminating herself.

She looked anxious, "Harris?"

"Yes, Bella?" he asked.

"I want to get married," she stated. "To you," she added, in case he didn't understand.

It was a bit early for this, "Okay, we can get married."

"Really?" she asked, bouncing on the bed.

"Really," he said, opening his arms for her.

She laughed, flopping down on him.

He grunted and rolled over her, smiling as she continued to laugh. He kissed her full lips, and her laughter tasted like chocolate and lavender.

She trailed her hand down his stomach, and he shivered, back arching when she reached below his sleep pants, her hand wrapping around his length.

Though he allowed plenty of opportunities, he never initiated sex with Bella. Neither her ex-husband nor the Dark Lord had ever given her choice.

A part of him found it hard to believe her innate instincts to lash out but then assault wasn't about sex, it was about power.

When Bella turned to him for physical comfort and pleasure, he felt handsome and wanted. Not someone just being used as an object, but a man who was allowed to share in these joys with this woman he loved.

"I want to get married this weekend," she said between kisses she laid along his neck.

He huffed, sliding down her before she could get any further in exploring him.

"Alright, we'll get married this weekend, you don't have to seduce my cooperation." He flipped up the skirt of her nightgown, "However, you do get to explain this to your sister."

She groaned before his lips returned to her skin.

oOo

It was not a large wedding, and give the security concerns, they got married on the edge of the Forbidden Forest within the school wards.

Newt Scamander and Hagrid were in charge of decorations, Luna also probably helped. Lights wrapped around trees who were all blooming as if at the height of spring.

Minerva officiated.

Despite the last minute nature of the event, Narcissa pulled through with a string quartet from France and cleared a spot to dance beneath the trees.

Harris's first marriage had been a grand affair, one driven by the desire to enjoy the future and desperation to forget the past.

This, was a far smaller event, and as most of the attendees were his students, a much younger crowd, alternating from bouncing along to music or summoning the bravery to dance with the Hippogryphs and Thestrals like Luna and Harry.

Hermione, in true Gryffindor fashion, was the first to rise to the challenge.

Nymphadora and Ted Tonks attended, at first awkward then bursting with laughter as Sirius and Regulus regaled them with childhood antics.

If anyone wondered who had preceded the Marauders as tricksters at Hogwarts, they need not look any further than the three Black sisters.

Minerva and Filius jested, with great sincerity, that they would both retire by the time any of Harris's children with Narcissa entered Hogwarts.

Knowing what Teddy, James, and Rose had gotten up to right under Harris's nose in their school days, he couldn't say that he blamed them.

For his first wedding, Harris had worn a tux, this time, however, he wore the robe weeding robes of Bella's father, Cygnus Black.

They were darkest green, flaring around him like a dress.

He felt like an elf from The Hobbit, but whatever discomfort he felt was forgotten when he saw his bride for the first time.

Gin had worn a cupcake dress with more layers of white than a twenty year snow storm, a veil hiding her face as if they were innocents who hadn't snuck off together at the every opportunity.

Bella didn't wear a traditional wedding gown and she wore no shoes.

Her dress was her favourite sky blue, the colour of the sky she never saw from her sliver of a window in her Azkaban cell. It hugged her form and fluttered just below her knees. On the dress, blue butterflies fluttered in the folds of her dress, an illusion of charmed fabric that moved with her.

The front of her hair was pulled up into a tiara, the rest allowed to fly free, tangled in the dark hair were white jasmine flowers.

She looked like a maenad, a forest spirit ready to lead men astray.

Harris was all too happy to be stolen by her, to be wanted and loved by her as her partner, not her trophy or caretaker.

But her husband.

The music swelled and Harris only knew he needed to speak when there was a pause in sound.

It didn't truly matter the words he spoke.

Both of them had been married before, neither of them were innocents, yet neither of them had the slightest reservation in devoting themselves to one another and their family.

Theirs was not a love for the ballads or the dinner table. Theirs was a love in knowing all the painful broken pieces in another, knowing exactly where their limit was, and an understanding that though things might be okay, tomorrow might not be.

Yet it wasn't for others to understand, it wasn't for others to ask why after their vows were spoken, Bella needed her sister's reassurance.

It wasn't for others to understand why she made Harris dance the first dance with Narcissa while Bella danced with Sirius.

The reality of them was not that they were broken beyond repair, rather that they changed beyond convention.

A traditional marriage and family were not something they could have managed nor wanted.

Harris had external motivations to function while Bella needed internal redirection to keep herself together.

They were dependent, dancing on the edge of disaster, but there was joy between them, a promise of a future they both desired.

Harris danced barefoot with his wife beneath the trees till the moon began to set and she fell asleep held in his arms, still swaying to the music.

No one but the string quartet saw his tears as he fell in love with the woman in his arms all over again.

That night Harris Magnolia Black accepted the fact that he could be happy in this reality, and maybe, selfishly, he didn't want to return to the universe he had been born to.

A part of his heart would always belong to his first family, but in promising himself to Bella and a new baby on the way, he acknowledged that Andromeda's curse and betrayal were also a blessing.

oOo

Regulus was having a difficult time sitting. Ever since he had been freed from his stone prison, it had been difficult to remain still.

Being still brought back the fear of being trapped.

Even though the loudness of his heart, his blood running through his veins, his lungs breathing in and tasting the hair, and his eyes… able to close, able to not see for a bit.

"Mr. Black?"

Regulus shot up from his seat, the papers in his arms spilling everywhere, "Ah! Yes, hi, that's me, so sorry!"

With a twist of his hands, the stack of papers fell back into his arms in the correct order, as he stretched out his hand to shake Amelia Bones's hand.

She arched a brow at him.

Regulus blushed, well aware that despite being thirty years old, he still looked like a gangly seventeen year old.

"Thank you," he stammered. "For meeting my proposals, I mean! Sorry, I meant for meeting with me."

"Were you this nervous of your Dark Lord?"

Regulus flinched, "I– the Dark Lord was just another monster, you're a…"

"A what?" she challenged.

"Someone whose opinion I respect," he said.

She did not seem impressed by the flattery, though he was being truthful.

Regulus knew how to behave around tyrants like his mother and the Dark Lord, he did not how to speak to people who might want to hear his honest opinion.

Madame Bones waved him into her office, "Take a seat, Mr. Black."

Regulus was getting the distinct impression that despite being the person to strike the gavel on his freedom, she didn't fully believe that he had been coursed into becoming a Death Order or that he had risked his life and lost the majority of his sanity in an attempt to kill the Dark Lord.

But that didn't really matter much if she listened to him. He placed his papers on the clean edge of her desk.

She sighed, picked up the stack and began leafing through it.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Reforms," he said. "Reforms specific to the standing of blood status."

She paused over a specific package, she looked at him, "Marriage and custody? Why would you care?"

"My mother used the Unforgivables on my brother, and occasionally on my father. He almost killed Sirius when he ran away, and there was almost nothing the law can do about it."

"Using an Unforgivable is a life sentence, we could have imprisoned her," Bones said.

"And she could have murdered him before the Aurors got there if their claims were believed about Pureblood Lady from one of the old houses."

Her lips thinned.

"There are too many protections for purebloods than there are for our minors."

"Protections that spared you," she pointed out.

Regulus nodded, "I agree, but it also has the effect that fewer children would have been disowned and fewer young people would have been picked up by a cultist. Fewer muggleborns and their families would have survived the war if they felt they could confide in the law."

She set down the stack, "Do you have any idea how long it takes to rewrite and edit the old laws?"

"I spent fourteen years without sleep or reprieve with just my thoughts and memories, to think of everything I did wrong and all the way our society failed to let an egomaniac like the Dark Lord come into power and break our country. Whatever it takes, is worth it."

Madame Bones tossed something at him, he fumbled it and almost dropped it before cupping it in his hand.

"What?"

"Congratulations."

"On what?" he squeaked, opening his hands to find a badge with his name on it.

"On your employment. You'll be working on rewriting and reshaping this law for the betterment of our society, as you put it."

Regulus bowed his head, "Thank you."

She tsked at him, "None of that. Go find Kingsley, he'll get you set up at a desk."

Regulus grinned and did as commanded.

Kingsley gave him a one armed hug, "Good job, kid, you impressed the boss."

Regulus frowned, "I'm not a kid!"

Kingsley laughed, "Save it, Reggie, for when your mean face doesn't look like you're pouting about not getting a second scoop of ice cream."

Regulus sighed, but still secretly pleased.

He was employed.

His mother would have been horrified and his brother would be delighted.

oOo

Getting permissions to go to London on a class field trip was not easy.

This, Luna was absolutely sure of has Professor Black handed out lanyards with little metal Hogwarts crests.

Each was a portkey that would take them back to safety if something happened.

Luna liked the professor's wife, she saw the world like Luna did, if much more afraid of the shadows than Luna could bring herself to be.

Of course, Luna imagined if she had lived with dementors for over a decade and a mother like Druella Black, she might be more wary of the dark.

Luna's Harry was very excited as they all waited in line on the long stone ramp.

Luna liked the garden of dinosaurs.

Before they departed, Professor Black had given rather basic instructions, "Those of you raised in wizarding homes write down everything you have questions about, and unless it's about the science of animal evolution, do not ask it aloud or use terms like muggles. There are security guards everywhere."

"As for those of you muggle raised. Please write down your observations about the not normal reactions, confusion, or behaviours you notice about your wizard raised classmates. Defence begins with appearance and your ability to blend into your surroundings."

"I never got to go on field trips," her Harry said as they waited. "But I read about this museum in the school library. And I loved the Jurassic Park books."

"Jurassic Park?" she asked, happy to see him happy.

"Yeah, uh, it got turned into a movie, but the books are really good, it's fantasy." He turned to Hermione. "Have you read them?"

Hermione shook her head, "I don't read science-fiction."

Harry scoffed at her tone, "Bet you've read Pride and Prejudice though, and that's fiction too."

"Jane Austin is one of the great classic writers," she sniffed.

Harry got into the debate then, clearly, while not a huge studier or researcher on his own time outside of classes, Harry had read a lot in his life, "Michael Crichton is a classic too. If it wasn't for Jurassic Park, archaeologists might not have gotten the funding they needed to fill museums. Well, Crichton, artists, and John Williams."

"Whose John Williams?" Luna asked.

Hermione and Harry gave her such a look of horror.

Hermione shook her head, "We have to fix this before you go to America or they are going to think you're aliens, not just foreigners."

Harry sniggered as if something Hermione had said was a pun, though Luna couldn't have guessed.

Luna exchanged a look with Theo.

"Why are there pineapples on everything?" Ron asked as he wandered back to them.

"Those are supposed to be pineapples?" another student asked pointing at the spikes on the gates.

"Yes, it's a symbol of wealth as they were difficult to get fresh," a muggleborn seventh year explained.

Finally, the line started moving and Luna felt as if she had stepped into a brighter, happier train station.

The floors were mosaics and the high, high ceilings had flowers painted on them.

Harry was extremely excited by the fossils of the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.

Luna didn't have the heart to tell them just then that they weren't extinct.

Half the class panicked when they walked into the room with the moving life-like dinosaurs.

All of them had grown up in magical households.

Some of them had seen dragons before, most hadn't, but to them, it was a reality that animals could grow that big, be alive, and be perfectly capable of eating them.

Explaining electronics proved difficult and Professor Black promised to find reading material for them all.

Everyone liked the rock rooms, here, the magical kids were able to whisper describe the magical properties that the stones were used for either for telling the future or as potion ingredients.

Someone tried to tattle to Professor Black about their classmates breaking the Stature of Secrecy, only to be told that magical rocks were something many muggles believed in and attempted to practice.

The whales astonished everyone and Luna decided that one day she would swim with these magnificent mammals.

Harry knew a lot about them, as well as sharks. She wondered if Harry would become a marine magi-zoologist. She wondered how much even Professor Scamander knew about marine animals, magical or otherwise.

Their field trip seemed to end too soon for everyone despite their desire for lunch. They all got their picture together as a group in front of the steps to pose with the giant tree trunk slab.

When they got back to Hogwarts, Professor Black praised them all for their performance, reporting that they 'were considered an extremely odd private school group for their awe and interest, but otherwise, they were just children, magical and non-magical, all alike.'

The half-blood and muggleborn commentary on their classmates was far less congratulatory.

Most notably, the reaction of most of them kept jumping every time they turned a corner to see a new stuffed animal.

Taxidermy was something that existed in the wizarding world after all.

One of the Purebloods retorted, "Well, after the dragon with the stubby arms turned to look at us what did you want us to think!? Any of those things might have been cursed."

A haunted museum appealed to everyone's imagination, Luna was happy to sit back with Harry at lunch and listen to ever escalating stories.

Hopefully, Professor Black wouldn't get fired for taking them to go see muggle dragon wranglers or practice in amateur potion brewing.

oOo

Voldemort had been tracking Professor Black and had been sorely tempted to attack the students until he realised how many aurors had been undercover waiting for just that.

It had been a long time since Voldemort had been to a muggle museum, he had forgotten how many old bones were here.

How many dead monsters.

If Black wanted a trap, then Voldemort would give him a trap.

Deliberately setting off the trace, Voldemort waited for his prey to fly into his spiders web.

Sure enough, the man appeared, standing on the base of the display of the big cats.

"Did you call, Tommy?" he asked, wearing round glasses that made him look unnervingly like James Potter.

If James Potter had lived long enough to grey at the temples.

Voldemort sneered, "Professor Black, so kind of you to join me."

"Does it burn, knowing I have the job you started a war for and still failed to get?" Black asked, though his mouth did not move and his voice echoed around the grand hall.

The previously darkened museum, was suddenly lit, magic occupying the bulbs of muggle lighting system. It cast the museum into strange shades of white and blue, as if they had been thrown into the ocean.

Voldemort felt his spine stiffen, the casual display of magic was disturbing.

Black raised his wand, and Voldemort smiled, the game was on.

Black dodged, his robes snatched back in the nick of time from the maw of the sabertoothed cat who had come alive behind him.

"Doubling down on the necromancy, I see," Black said, again without his lips moving.

The man flicked his wand at the sabertooth fearlessly, and it collapsed as if falling back asleep.

Too bad for him, that single cat was not the only dead thing in this muggle animal mausoleum.

Black smiled, and the look in his blue eyes was manic. When he laughed, the sound came this time from his parting lips.

It sounded wrong, but Voldemort didn't have long to dwell on that, as the floor beneath his feet wered ripped upwards, every mosaic shard a projectile.

Voldemort turned those projectiles to dust. He cackled as the T-Rex skeleton from his own childhood came alive, its muscles and flesh, forming with each step.

It roared.

Professor Black laugh echoed round them.

Raw energy formed in the man's palm, a dark magic that Voldemort expected from a Black but not this one.

The power in his hand shifted to deepest blue and he pitched it at Voldemort, forcing him to call up a shield.

What kind of freak didn't care about a monster as large as a dragon charging him?

Black continued his assault by floor shards, and Voldemort summoned fiend fire, throwing the room into blazing light like owl burning on water.

The professor grinned, somehow managed to summon a black hole, or what appeared to be a tear in the fabric of space, that swallowed the flame.

The fire vanished with a puff and pop of sound.

Almost belatedly, the inferius dinosaur fell to the ground in a scatter of bones.

Baring his teeth, Voldemort flung curse after curse at the infuriating wizard who smiled gayly, fighting off every curse with the ease of someone who knew him.

Knew what curses he would use next and how to counter them.

The museum came alive with animals long dead, but Professor Black didn't so much as point his wand against them, instead, keeping his undivided attention on Voldemort as they duelled.

Still, the animals fell apart, the bones of plesiosaurs and prehistoric dolphins swam around them threw the air only to fall apart before they could attack.

"How are you doing this?" Voldemort snarled as his every attack was thwarted. He tried to apparate behind his opponent and found that the wards had been lain.

"Having performance anxiety, Tommy-Boy?" Professor Black's voice asked, bouncing off all the walls around him, once more without his lips moving.

"Damn you!" Voldemort roared into the chaos that spun around them.

"Haven't you figured it out yet?" that voice and another's spoke, lips in sync.

"You were always too attached to the prophecy," Professor Black said from behind him.

Voldemort spun round, "You…"

He only just managed to guard himself against the curse thrown at his exposed back. He staggered as the ball of blue energy dissolved the stone at his feet, frazzling his shield charm.

Voldemort stepped back so he could see both professors, shaken by the near miss and his own foolishness of turning his back on what he had wrongly assumed was an empty threat. "What is this?"

The professor he had been duelling skipped to the other, leaning against his doppelganger with a wicked smile.

The only difference between them was the rounded black framed glasses the first professor still wore.

The doppelganger didn't hesitate to meet his twin with a passionate kiss.

Disgusting.

Voldemort struck them with the killing curse, which they sidestepped in an almost dance like movement.

The first professor laughed, and Voldemort was finally able to place the familiarity of that sound.

"Bellatrix Lestrange!" he seethed. "You little traitor."

"Bella Black now," she sing-songed. "Mrs. Bella Black, and I've come to kill you, Mr. Riddle."

Voldemort was going to slaughter them both.

But the newly weds worked in seemless tandem, summoning a swarm of blue-black butterflies.

Fleshing eating butterflies, as it turned out, that cut at Voldemort's skin before he could finish insenerating them all.

Bellatrix laughed, the polyjuice running out, leaving the witch drowning in robes too large for her, a pair of glasses slipping down her nose as she giggled.

"As I was saying," Professor Black said. "You put too much stock in a prophecy, you might have won the war had you just left the babies alone."

Voldemort smiled, "So you know you will lose, Potter is still a child I can, and will, destroy."

The Professor smirked, "The first time, the power you knew not was my mother's blood curse. And now? You will fail because you did not know, did not even suspect, there could be two of us."

"Two?" Voldemort asked before he felt his blood cold at the use of the phrase 'my mother's blood curse.',

"Potter!?"

The professor bowed grandly, in a sweep of robes, "I am a Harry Potter, but I am the Lord of House Black. And you're fucked."

Voldemort screamed his rage while Bellatrix laughed at him, her wand raised with Professor Potter's.

Lord Voldemort, naturally, recogonised the curse they used, and though it was not an Unforgivable, there was no shield in the world that could have protected him from their joint magic.

The Unmaking Curse, shown like a comet of white-blue, devouring him whole and leaving nothing of him behind.

oOo

Bella laughed, dancing over the spot the Dark Lord had met his nevermore.

Harris smiled, and began repairing the damage they'd caused to the museum, putting the bones and displays back to rights. Bones walked themselves back into their collections and stuffed beasts rose on their own power to return to their educational providing slumber.

The broken glass and mosaic floors were mended like a video of waterfall flowing in reverse.

Bella slammed against him, "That was so much fun!"

"You were wonderful," Harris said, holding her against him. She had toyed the cult leader as Harris warded the museum to trap Voldemort in place. As she fought, Harris had the leisure time to uncharm the necromancy curses.

Bella tucked her hands in the too large sleeves, "We defeated the Dark Lord. I'm forever free of him."

He kissed her nose, removing the glasses that he himself no longer wore. It had been surprising that Voldemort hadn't been tipped off by that detail alone. Harris knew that he resembled greatly his younger self and James Potter.

"How do you feel about getting some ice cream?" he asked his wife.

She smiled, "You are singular most romantic wizard on the planet."

Harris threw his head back and laughed, "Slaying Dark Lords and ice cream is the way to your heart, I see."

She leaned her full weight against him, "He used me as a weapon but you? You fought beside me as my equal."

He cupped her face in his hands, "Bella, I treat you that way because you are my equal."

She kissed him quickly and sweetly, "You promised ice cream."

He kissed her forehead, "So I did."

He disapparated them, departing, as it so happened, just before the security guards converged on their location to find all their objects and fossils unharmed, though freshly dusted, their floors polished, and their security cameras and lights completely nonfunctional.

oOo

Narcissa squeezed Harris's hand hard enough to break as she screamed.

It wasn't so much out of pain as fury.

The healers seemed somewhat cowed as they tried to calm down.

Their baby was born with an answering bellow.

Narcissa released his hand, "Give him to me, give me my baby!"

Harris caught the baby from the healer's arm, washing the blood from their daughter with a sweep of his hand.

"She," Harris said, cradling his fourth child close to his heart as he brought her to her mother. "Our daughter."

Narcissa, panting and sweaty, managed to be as regal as ever as she beheld her daughter for the first time.

She allowed Harris to cradle their child with her. He sat behind her on the bed so that she could hold them both.

"Alyssum," Narcissa breathed, her gaze full of awe and determination. "My Sweet Alyssum."

"Worth Beyond Beauty," Harris translated, Rose had been rather found of the Langauge of Flowers.

Narcissa nodded, "She won't be like me or my sisters, she will know, without doubt, that she is loved. Not depending on her beauty or presentation. We will love her and support her."

Harris put his hand over Narcissa's where they cradled their newborn, "Love, without condition." He kissed the cheek of the mother of his child.

Tears slid down Narcissa's cheeks as she leaned back against him, to lean on his strength.

"I want more," she said. "I don't want another child to grow up alone."

Harris hushed her as their Alyssum began to cry again, "You can have as many children as you want, Narcissa, and I will adore every one of them. I will always be here to support them and you."

Narcissa rocked their child against her chest, letting herself cry, letting herself relax enough to trust in another. To trust in this man who loved her daughter, possibly, as much as she did.

oOo

Draco was overwhelmed and a bit afraid when his mother placed his baby sister in his arms.

Harry, however, was entranced, pressing against Draco's side to coo over the infant.

Draco was still weirded out that there were, in fact, two Harry Potters, and one of them was his mother's lo–

Nope.

Nope, Draco wasn't going to think about, despite the obvious evidence in his arms.

Professor Black was functionally his step father, while also being, weirdly and functionally, Harry's stepfather.

Which made them Draco's sister's father and brother.

It was weird, too weird, and really, Professor Black was too crazy to be Harry.

Draco stopped trying to figure it out in favour of figuring out how to hold his sister who was probably going to be more spoiled than Draco had been.

Only, unlike Draco, Alyssum would have a father who loved her and who wanted to be there for her, no matter what.

Theirs was a strange family, Draco found himself quite liking being apart of it.

Prologue

Harris and Narcissa had two more daughters, making the sisters three: Alyssum, Aster, Artemisia. The three Black Sisters knew little in their loves that was not love, family, and prosperity.

They were, after all, three daughters who came exactly who they wanted, who were loved as they wished to love, and who never folded to the tragedies of their world, meeting each of life's challenge without fear and wisdom greater than their years.

What was most surprising about the three Black Sisters was what they were known for: not for their devastating beauty, not their blinding intelligence, nor even their unfettered magical gifts, which were profound in the extreme.

No, what Alyssum, Artemisia, and Aster Black were best known for was their unwavering kindness.

There is special sort of strength to kindness, a bravery of the heart that Harris, Sirius, Narcissa, and Bella Black all believed, at one time or another, lost to them. Thus, they never stopped being amazed by their daughters' brilliance.

It was in this way, that Harry Potter the younger and Luna Lovegood grew into this larger family they had always dreamed of having.

Luna became the girls' favourite aunt. Many years later, well after their successful careers as magi-zoologists and magi-marine-biologists, Alyssum became Luna and Harry's children's favourite aunt in turn.

Favourites aside, theirs was a family of prosperity and love.

The Black Family, once known for the darkness galaxy, became beacons of hope.

Sirius Black became a beloved Transfiguration teacher, as the Weasley Twins were found of pointing out, the dog inheriting the cat's legacy.

Regulus Black, in his time, reformed Ministry's legal system, and Regulus's children became prominent figures in their society, known for their morality and civic pride.

Narcissa Black kept as far from politics as humanly possible, yet still managed to influence every generation around her. Her life was a happy and fulfilled one, especially when she became a great-grandmother.

Her grandchildren thought Grandma Narcissa was the kindest witch on the planet to the consternation of anyone else who had met her.

As for Professor Harris Black, he never quite forgot the universe he came from nor the family he left behind.

He too, was loved best by his grandchildren who believed 'Poppy Black' could magic the stars into the sky while disbelieving their all so sweet and baking grandfather capable of murdering the Dark Lord.

He was too nice for that.

Grandmother Bella, however, was remembered as the witch who defeated the Dark Lord and the woman who made Poppy Black smile even when he seemed at his saddest.

No one knew better than the elders of the Black family that one could not always rely on family, that romantic love could as easily tear you apart, as heal.

Love was a choice.

Family was a challenge.

The Black Family was one that had overcome annilation, betrayal, and willful cruelty. Through their many hurts and broken hearts, they had learned to value those they loved; beyond ruin and despair.

Beyond pain and fear, there was always a reason to keep fighting for tomorrow, to keep living for those who loved you or those who might one day need your love.

Living was not an expedition of avoiding pain, it was a trial of hearts learning to love as only they could.

oOo

Authour's Note: This story is dedicated to everyone who has ever felt broken or incomplete, trying their hardest to fall in love with the life we have.