I didn't want to admit that things were changing in my family. I persuaded myself that as long as I pretended things were the same as they always had been, that was how they would remain. I savoured those rare moments I spent alone with my sisters, and for the first time since I had arrived at Hogwarts I looked forward to the summer holidays when it would be just the three of us again, as it had been before.
But if I had thought the summer would bring about a resurgence in our relationship, things did not go exactly as planned. Certainly, Bella, Cissy and I spent more time with each other than we had at school, but Bella also began to leave more frequently, visiting the Lestranges, the Travers, the Yaxleys, all the most well-connected pureblood families, even those whose children were not close to her age… I was invited along, but rarely chose to go with her. I had no particular desire to spend time with any other Slytherins during summer; I saw more than enough of them at Hogwarts.
Unfortunately, Bella's unbridled popularity also meant many of the children came to our house as well. Rabastan hung around more than he ever had before, since his older brother Rodolphus was close friends with Bella. I had still not really forgiven Rabastan for his behaviour earlier in the year, and did not particularly enjoy his company. I much preferred Leo Avery, because at least when he came over we could sneak our brooms out to the Quidditch pitch and practise throwing Quaffles. Leo didn't seem to think my skill at flying was inappropriate, and that made him alright in my eyes.
The Tonks boy had beaten me in both Transfiguration and Charms, while I had come first in Herbology and Potions. My parents barely glanced at my report before dismissing it. Narcissa, on the other hand, was congratulated, despite achieving results that were slightly lower than my own. I knew why; it was because Lucius Malfoy had come top of her class. It was not considered a disappointment to come second to a pureblood boy. Only to a Mudblood, as I had.
Bella's results were a strange mix of brilliant and dismal. She excelled whenever she chose to apply herself, particularly in Defence, despite professing her dissatisfaction with Professor Grouch. In Transfiguration, where I knew she clashed strongly with Professor McGonagall, her marks were nowhere near what they could have been. And she all but failed Herbology, which I found rather amusing.
"It's a waste of time," she declared when I questioned her about it. We were in her bedroom, Bella positioned in front of the full-length mirror as she tried on various outfits in preparation for our dinner at the Lestranges. "Who wants to stand around in a smelly greenhouse getting dirty and playing with worms?"
I bit my tongue. There wasn't much point arguing with her. If there was one thing I understood about my sister, it was that once she had made her mind up about something, no one, not even me, could change it.
"What do you think of this?" she asked, pulling out a blood-red dress from the wardrobe that I had never seen before, and pirouetting with it pressed against her.
I stared. "There's no way Father will let you out of the house in that," I said. It was true. The dress was low cut, and clinging; it would show off every one of Bella's developing curves. The colour would be striking against her milk pale skin and raven curls. She would look devastatingly beautiful. Dangerous.
Bella rolled her eyes, and tossed the dress back into the wardrobe. "Rodolphus would like it though," she said, and a wicked smile crept across her features.
I didn't want to think about my sister trying to impress Rodolphus Lestrange. I did not like him, although I knew he was considered a catch among the pureblood girls I spoke to. He was handsome, rich, the eldest son and, to cap it off, an above average Quidditch player. But I did not like the way he looked at my sister, as though she were a beautiful possession he wanted to own, and I had never heard him do or say anything that indicated much intelligence.
"Don't look so glum Andy," Bella teased, clearly noting my sour expression. She walked over and ruffled my hair, and I smiled despite myself. "Now, how about this one?"
The start of my third year came and went without fanfare. There was no Sorting to look forward to, my sisters were both settled at school with me, and I knew what to expect with most of my subjects. I was surprised, then, to enter the Great Hall one morning for breakfast not long after the start of term, and find the rest of the school abuzz with activity and whispers.
"What's going on?" I asked Annabelle as I slid in next to her at the Slytherin table. I began to spoon fruit salad into a bowl before I noticed the wide and almost fearful glance she gave me. My spoon froze in mid-air. "What's happened?"
She shook her head, handing me her copy of the Daily Prophet. "There's been an attack," she said simply.
There certainly had been. The front cover of the Prophet was dedicated to a picture of what appeared to have once been a busy shopping precinct, but was now a wreck of smashed brick, busted pipes and shattered glass. Rather ominously, several bodies lay among the wreckage, their limbs twisted at odd angles or else half covered by debris. Strangely dressed people ran in and out of the frame, rushing back and forth carrying stretchers and other items I couldn't recognise, their faces uniformly terrified.
Tearing my eyes away from the grizzly scene, my eyes flicked up to read the heading that accompanied the picture. It took a while for the words to make sense to me.
EXPLOSION IN LONDON: 8 MUGGLES FEARED DEAD, DOZENS INJURED IN BLAST
I blinked, and looked back at Annabelle. She had a curiously blank expression on her face. "I don't understand," I said.
She stared at me.
"I mean," I continued hurriedly. "What does this have to do with us? Surely – surely Muggles die every day?"
"Not in explosions, Andy," said Annabelle softly. "Not like this."
I frowned. "What do you mean?" Suddenly, the light clicked on in my head, and I felt a chill pass through me. "You're saying, wizards had something to do with this?"
She nodded.
I stared back down at the picture. It was a horrible scene. I couldn't understand how anyone could want to cause such destruction. "It must have been an accident," I thought out-loud.
Annabelle said nothing.
The attack was all that anyone could talk about for days. Theories as to what had happened were rampant, but I found very few people who agreed with me that it might have been an accident. Time and again the same words were mentioned, until even I could no longer ignore them, "Purebloods… Supremacy… The Dark Lord…"
Nonetheless, I had other things to think about in those days than attacks I barely understood. Classes were more challenging than ever, and homework had become a daily occurrence. I was spending a lot of time in the library, scribbling out essays until my hand cramped, reading until my eyes itched and reciting incantations under my breath until I knew them all by heart. But it was no use. In Transfiguration, which we shared with the Hufflepuffs, I found myself once more second to Ted Tonks.
He had grown over the summer, and lost most of his puppyfat. His face remained boyish despite his size, however, and his yellow hair had not darkened. Neither had his magical skill diminished. I watched him as closely as was possible without drawing attention to myself, trying to discover his secret. Perhaps Anton Fawley was helping him when nobody was looking? But Fawley appeared no better at Transfiguration than the rest of the class, whereas Tonks was clearly a cut above.
"Well done Mr. Tonks," Professor McGonagall could constantly be heard to say in our lessons. "Ten points to Hufflepuff."
Hufflepuff, incidentally, were leading the race for the House Cup that year. It grated on my nerves every time Tonks earned points for his house, but it would be a lie to say he did not deserve them. When we were once again paired together for an assignment, I seized my chance to study him more closely.
Our assignment was to transfigure our noses into different sizes. It was not a task I was particularly keen to practise on another person, let alone a Muggle-born.
"Do you want to go first?" he asked after I had sat down. He was polite as usual, but I noticed he seemed rather uncomfortable. I wondered if he knew what my family thought of Mudbloods like him.
"No," I said. "You go first."
I watched as he wet his lips nervously, before raising his wand and pointing it at my face. "I hope this works," he muttered. "Narus Immulatus."
It was as though a wet, warm sponge had been squashed against my face. I felt a strange sort of wriggling and itching in my nose, and a moment later Ted was leaning back in his seat with a broad grin.
"I did it!" he exclaimed happily. "Here, take a look."
He handed me the mirror we had been provided, and I raised it hesitantly to my face. I didn't know what to expect, and was relieved to see that he hadn't done anything particularly gruesome. Rather than the narrow, pointed nose I was accustomed to, I had a short, upturned one, almost like a little button. I could almost say the change wasn't bad.
Lowering the mirror, I met Ted's nervous face. "What do you think?" he asked quickly. "I didn't want to do anything too big, in case it didn't work, you know? Do you like it?"
I shrugged. "Turn it back please."
He muttered the counter spell and I felt the same eruption of warmth around my nose. When I felt it, it appeared to have returned to normal. "Right," I said. "My turn."
I lifted my wand, and Ted went a little pale.
"Wait," he said before I could speak. "Don't – umm…" he trailed off.
"Don't what?"
He seemed to hesitate, before shrugging one shoulder. "Never mind. Go on then." And he scrunched up his eyes in a rather amusing show of fear.
I visualised the nose I wanted to create, just as Professor McGonagall had instructed, waved my wand and muttered the spell.
Ted's nose began to stretch, elongating and lengthening until it was more than twice its normal size. It had grown crooked, so that it looked like a rather horrific accident had befallen him and knocked his entire face off kilter. I held my breath, horrified at what his reaction would be. Would he be angry that I had made such a terrible alteration to his face?
Ted took a breath, and lifted a hand to feel his nose. His eyes went wide, and he immediately snatched up the mirror, staring at his reflection as though he had been turned into a ghost. I waited for him to scowl at me, preparing myself for a barrage of anger and insults at what I had done.
To my complete surprise, he burst out laughing.
"Ha ha ha – oh man!" Ted banged his fist against the desk, his eyes streaming. "Look at it – ha ha ha – hey Ant! Ant, look at my – " he almost fell off his chair, and I felt my own lips twitch as I watched him. "It's – ha ha – that's great – " he looked at me with a newfound respect, and I wondered that turning a boy's nose into a train wreck could cause him to like you more.
"Okay, my turn," he said after I had reversed the spell. I wanted to tell him not to dare to bewitch my nose into anything like I had his, but the good-naturedness of his laughter held my tongue. With the news of the Muggle deaths recently, it had been a while since I had had occasion to laugh. "Narus Immulatus."
My nose became a thin, hook-shaped monstrosity. It made me look quite evil. I smirked, and without even waiting for him to change it back, I gave him a huge, bulbous nose like Professor Grouch's from the year before. Ted saw it and burst into laughter again.
After that it became a competition between us. He gave me a bright red nose, an upturned nose like a pig, and a nose that stuck out so far it almost obscured my vision, while I gave him a drooping nose, a perfectly triangular nose, and a nose with thick tufts of black hair sticking out of each nostril. The last one made him laugh so hard he really did fall off his chair, drawing the attention of Professor McGonagall.
"What's going on here?" she demanded, as we both struggled to breathe through our tears and the mangled mess we had made of each other's faces. The teacher waved her wand, and both our noses returned to normal; but it took slightly longer for the laughter to subside. "Transfiguration is not a laughing matter, Miss Black, Mr Tonks. I am disappointed in your immature behaviour."
Ted pressed his lips together in an attempt to keep a straight face. With a valiant effort he held his composure, even managing a slightly remorseful expression as he said "Sorry, Professor."
"If it wasn't for your admirable display of skill in the area of human transfiguration, you would both be losing house points," said Professor McGonagall. She was looking at me rather intently, as though trying to read my mind. Her curious, searching expression sobered me faster than anything else. "As it is, I ask you to please be more sensible in the future."
I had not realised what a scene we had caused until I returned to my seat among the Slytherins. They were all looking at me rather strangely, and it was only when Annabelle whispered to me that I understood why.
"You were having a lot of fun with that Mudblood boy."
I shrugged. It had been a stupid bit of humour, that was all. "I turned his nose into a broom-wreck. He seemed to think it was funny."
Annabelle smiled, and nothing more was said. At the end of class, however, Ted gave me a grin as he left with his friends. I returned it instinctively, before checking quickly to make sure none of my housemates had seen. Thankfully, they were all too busy talking to pay any attention to me.
Our impromptu friendship was not to last long.
November brought my first visit to the wizarding village of Hogsmeade. I was going with Bella and her friends, and was looking forward to finally seeing all of the wonderful shops I had heard so much about.
It was a fine day, though cold, when we left the castle. Bella was in a strange mood; she seemed alternatively ecstatic and angry, and evaded my attempts to find out if something was bothering her, linking her fingers in mine and dragging me along so quickly I had no breath to ask questions. Her other arm she linked with various Slytherins, although I noticed she spent more time with Rodolphus than any other. In her dark green cloak, with her hair tumbling loose and her lips bright red, she looked like a picture of winter perfection. Only her eyes showed the dangerous passion that simmered just below the surface.
Everything began so well. There were lots of us, walking together: me, Bella, Rodolphus and Rabastan, Thorfinn Rowle, Orion Travers, Andreas Yaxley, Vincent Crabbe, Hadrian Flint, his sister Helena and my cousin Phylissa Rosier. The other students gave us a wide berth, which didn't bother us at all. We went first to the Three Broomsticks for pumpkin juice, and although I noticed the nasty looks sent our way by the Gryffindors we passed, I didn't think much of it. I knew my sister was a polarising figure. You either loved her or hated her, and it was clear not everybody loved her.
After the Three Broomsticks, the group separated for a while. I went off with Phylissa and Helena, who wanted me to come with them to help choose presents to send home to their families. Phylissa's younger brother, Evan, was apparently dying to come to Hogwarts, and she wanted to give him something to help him wait. Since he was my cousin, and I could remember how hard it had been to leave Narcissa behind when I came in first year, I agreed to help her shop.
We passed an uneventful afternoon looking at miniature dragon models and toy broomsticks, before meeting back up with Bella and her friends in the centre of the village. Whatever had happened while I was away, it had not improved my sister's mood. She hugged me hard when I approached, but it was not a comforting embrace; I could feel the tension in her, as though she was wound tight enough to snap.
Perhaps it was only an unfortunate series of events, but I felt almost as if the progress of that day was fated to end as it did. We began our return to Hogwarts, walking slowly since Bella set the pace and she did not seem in any hurry. I tried to talk to her about her day, but she was only half-listening to me, her answers short and distracted, her eyes searching the path in front of her, as though she was looking for something, or someone.
It did not take her long to find it. We rounded the corner and three students came into view, instantly recognisable to me even without seeing their faces. It was Ted Tonks, ambling along the path with Frank Longbottom and Anton Fawley. The three of them were laughing, oblivious to the danger that had emerged behind them.
"… and McGonagall's like, please be more mature," Ted was saying, putting on an admirable impersonation of the stern Transfiguration Professor. "As if I even – " he stopped as Bella's shadow fell across the path in front of him. He, Anton and Frank turned around, their conversation coming to an abrupt halt.
Bella had paused too. Her entire body went very still, like a cat that had spied its prey. I felt a jolt of foreboding in my body, and had to suppress a sudden desire to run back to the castle and leave all of them behind me. I did not like the look on my sister's face, nor the way the other Slytherins had closed ranks around me.
"Well well well," Bella said at last, breaking the tense silence. She stepped forward, separating herself from the rest of us, and surveyed the three third years in front of her. "What do we have here? Two blood-traitors and a mudblood."
"Sod off, Black," said Frank Longbottom. I saw that he already had his wand in his hand, as did Anton. Ted was the only one who had not drawn a weapon. Inadvertently, my gaze lifted to his face, and I saw that he was staring at me. Our eyes locked, and I wondered what he could read in my expression, for his own turned very hard. Beside me, I thought I felt Rabastan tense.
"Oooh," Bella put on a tone of mocking. "Going to fight me, Longbottom? My my, how far your family has fallen. Great-uncle Harfang would be proud, I'm sure. And you, Fawley? To think you ended up a blood-traitor." She tossed her head.
I had never seen Anton look so angry. He raised his eyes and met Bella's contemptuous stare head on, and despite being outnumbered almost four to one, his voice did not waver. "Rather a blood-traitor than a Black," he spat.
What happened next is still a blur. Curses flew across the path, and somehow Ted ended up on all fours, retching uncontrollably. Anton was slammed against a tree, and Frank, who had thrown himself at Rabastan and managed to land a punch to his jaw before being gang-tackled to the ground, was buried under the fists of Crabbe and Rowle. I covered my face with my hands and tried to pretend I didn't know what was happening around me.
It only lasted a few moments, before I heard Andreas Yaxley's smooth voice yell out "Teachers!" and all of a sudden Bella grabbed my wrist and we were running full-pelt up the road that led back to Hogwarts. I managed to turn my head at the next bend, craning to see what was happening, but all I could see was three bodies sprawled on the ground. We did not stop running until we had skidded into the Entrance Hall and down the steps to the dungeons, and when we finally reached the safety of the common room, Bella was laughing wildly, her cheeks flushed and her eyes blazing, as though she was having the time of her life. I felt sick, and excused myself as soon as I could to my own room.
All three boys needed hospitalising. I learnt later that Anton had a dislocated shoulder, Frank had broken his nose in two places, and Ted… it was not vomit coming from Ted's mouth, but mud. All I knew at the time, however, was that we were all under suspicion as being responsible, and within a day of the boys regaining consciousness all of Bella, Orion, Rodolphus, Rabastan, Rowle, Yaxley and Crabbe had been given detention every night for three months. Not a single one of them received howlers from their parents.
I was not punished, and I was not sure whether this made me feel better or worse. I thought perhaps it meant the boys did not blame me for what happened, but the next time I passed Frank Longbottom in the corridor he glared at me with such disgust that I almost took a step back. Ted never looked my way in class again. His marks did not slip, but he seemed to frown more than I remembered, and it was not until after the Christmas holidays that I heard him laugh.
I was not speaking to Bella. At first she found my silence amusing, teasing me affectionately about what a tender heart I was; but when my stonewalling continued she quickly grew impatient.
"Don't be such a baby Andy," she exclaimed when I had rebuffed her attempts to brush my hair for the third time, a week or so after the incident. Her cheeks were pink and I saw in her eyes that she was angry, but I didn't care. I didn't think I would ever be able to talk to her again. "It wasn't even a big – "
I rounded on her with a snarl, daring her to finish that sentence. She broke off and gave me a searching look. "Alright, I'm sorry," she said at last, reaching for me again. "Is that what you wanted?"
I jerked out of her grasp. "You're not sorry," I said, and despite my best attempts at control we could both hear the quaver in my voice. I had never been mad at Bella for so long, and it was taking its toll on me.
Bella sighed. "I forget how young you are sometimes," she said. "How innocent…" she rubbed her temple and for just a moment I saw the vulnerability that she always hid from me. It was a rare glimpse of weakness. "I lost my temper. Is that such a bad thing?"
Against my will I could feel my defences crumbling. "It is when someone ends up in the Hospital Wing," I said. "And I'm not that young. You're only fifteen, Bella."
She waved a hand as though to swat away my point. "They're fine, aren't they," she said breezily. "Don't look at me like that Andy. Come on, let me fix your hair, it's a total mess."
I gave in, because I wasn't strong enough yet to resist my sister's charm. And charm she had, in spades. She finished her detentions and didn't put another foot out of line, and I began to convince myself that it had only been a one-off, instigated mostly by the other Slytherins, in which Bella and I had merely been unfortunate observers. I told myself that I had not seen her cast any curses, and she had certainly not been the one to break Frank Longbottom's nose. But I think I knew, even then, that it had been she who sent the curse at Ted, the one that had him coughing mud.
.