Pieces of Black

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The Firstborn Renegade

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They always say that the first child is a blessing; he or she never disobeys, and appreciates life and everything in it, even when there is nothing left to appreciate.

If you told that to Andromeda, as her mother had done countless times in an irritated fashion, she would laugh and tell you, in the same manner, that they--whoever the hell they were--were quite mistaken. Because they had obviously never met a Black.

She never really was a bad kid but then she never really was a princess either--well not by her family's standards. Cissa had always been the princess, looking elegant in Black and in every other colour she ever garbed in, and the girl carried herself with such grace and perfect poise. Cissa was born a golden baby and lived her entire life as a golden beauty: calm, collected, and totally untouched. Andromeda could never understand how the hell she managed it.

Narcissa Black had the potential to have been liked very much if she only hadn't looked so haughty all the time. In comparison, Andromeda was sufficiently liked--even though she was known as the sister who frequently rolled her eyes and had a knack for sarcasm. Bellatrix, however, was rarely liked and was thought to have perhaps too vicious a nature for even a Black.

Even though she was constantly compared to her sisters--her younger sisters!--Andromeda Eleanor Black always managed to shrug everything off, becoming quite an ignorant person by the time she was half-way through school. She would continue living the way she was destined to live and it could best be--or perhaps only be--explained as a double life.

At home and in front of her family, she was a very convincing hater of 'mudbloods' and those who affiliated with them, and put on an excellent show of preaching the family motto of Toujours Pur at every appropriate occasion. At school, although she was initially sorted into Slytherin, there never was and never would be a Slytherin like her again.

You would probably have heard how little eleven year-old Sirius Black was the biggest disgrace to The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, being sorted into Gryffindor and all. Well maybe in comparison you'd find Meda less rebellious--perhaps even less interesting--but oh unless saw with your own two eyes the way she was, the friends she had, and the things she did during most of her Hogwarts years, you'd probably laugh it all off and never dream of believing the firstborn Black of this generation to be capable of carrying out such hypocritical acts. The most remarkable of everything was perhaps the fact that she got away with it very cleanly...for a good while anyway.

Being the only Black in the school for nearly all the years she attended, she was quite fortunate. Narcissa only started a little while before Andromeda was out and so there really was no one to watch her or catch her until it was too late.

During Christmas and Easter breaks, she'd badmouth muggleborns even though she had been dating one since her fourth year and not a single friend of hers was a pureblood. She trusted her baby cousin with a lot of this and seeing as he wasn't nearly old enough to go to Hogwarts and he was very fond of her, Sirius respected her decisions. If ever he awed at her decisions, it would be out of admiration, and even though he had sworn never to tell a soul any of it, he did ask why she did it. And because little Sirius was so adorable and so different and just about the only one in her family who understood her, even at such a young age, she told him the truth with a sad smile and never regretted it. If only I could make you understand my life, darling. I've had enough of it all!

And it was the truth. She'd had enough of the talk of blood and purity in her stiff, formal childhood to last her a lifetime and then some. It was like a prison and she needed to be released more than anything. All those years of listening to such senseless family values had moulded her into a carefree little liar when it came to talk of blood, especially in terms of her own personal acquaintances. She knew her limits and she knew when to draw the line and so she wouldn't talk of school anymore than she generally had to. When she was put in an awkward position, and that occasionally happened at Christmas dinners or New Year's parties, she'd do an admirable job at playing her way about it or else she'd turn the conversation around or mock the question with a roll of her eyes but in the end, she'd generally win.

So it was all very easy and it was all just a game and it would all seem to work out somehow...until the best and worst thing of her life happened to her.

Sixteen when she decided to date Ted Tonks. Sixteen. He was another one of her flings. Another muggleborn boy to keep her image up: pureblood, Slytherin Black going for another mudblood, and look, he's a Gryffindor! Could it possibly get any better than this? That was more or less how it happened and nothing more was supposed to happen, but because life doesn't like to bore you, that was definitely not all that happened.

They say you never know when lightning can strike you and you should therefore avoid situations that increase the risk. Unfortunately, love was similar, but only to an extent. It would strike without a warning but there was nothing you could do to flee from its grasp, either before it struck you or after.

They were so good at all the games, both of them. Long evenings would be spent over chessboards; breezy mornings over the Quidditch pitch; and little did they know that they'd end up spending sleepless nights staring at the ceilings of the four-poster beds in their respective dormitories, wondering how in the world they were to master that game of love where the rules were as clear as mud.

So yes, Andromeda had lived a double life, been a brilliant actress, and a skilled pretender but she could only pretend for so long, for there was no more pretending once she fell in love. After that, all hell had broken loose.

Bold, reckless, young, fiery. Sixteen, sixteen! But even then it was too much.

Kiss him goodbye or kiss everything else goodbye. Those were the words running through her head on the last day of the summer before seventh year started. Those were her mother's words, in reaction to Andromeda's own foolish ones.

'He loves me and I love him.'

'What's his name?'

'Ted.'

'Surname?'

Silence.

'Andromeda, do I know his family?'

'No. I doubt it.'

'What's the name, child? Tell me.'

'Tonks.'

'What in the world? What kind of name is that?'

'Muggle,' she mumbled.

'What? I thought I heard--'

'You heard muggle,' she said firmly, 'He's muggleborn.'

'A Mudblood? Merlin! My daughter! Holy hell, Meda!'

And so the row had gone on and on until her father had come home and her mother had said through clenched teeth to be a good girl and forget about it and she wouldn't tell Mr. Black. Andromeda had never really been afraid of her father but she had decided to end the argument because it would be a waste of breath to go on.

By the time she got on to the train to go to Hogwarts for the last time in seven years, she had made up her mind on what she would be kissing goodbye and her decision was frozen solid by the end of that year when Ted had asked her to marry him. Ted, with his calm gaze, rugged shoes, loose tie and careless character, was a boy who never cared much about anything. It was an odd little miracle how of all people, he had gotten through to Andromeda with his hearty laugh and soft eyes when no one else in her life had ever managed it.

Sometimes, she'd ask herself if she was allowing herself to fall for Ted because he represented everything her family stood against but then she would remember that she had not chosen to fall for him and could definitely not choose to fall out of this no matter what she did. That was the point in time when you came to know what you were doing. After ages of not knowing and not understanding, there finally came a point when you knew and nothing could have made you stray from the path that you chose. That point in time had come for Andromeda and it would be goodbye to everything else but it would be a goodbye that was well worth it...even though she would miss Sirius quite a bit.

Sirius, oh darling Sirius! She never did see him again. When he was growing up and in Hogwarts, she was married and out of Britain--for her own sake, not Ted's, because she could not bear to be near all those people who had once called her their daughter, their sister, their niece, their family. When she did come back, after travelling the world and weary of it, it was to enrol her daughter, Nymphadora, into Hogwarts, and face the dreadful news that Sirius Black had been imprisoned as a mass murderer, killing a number of people including his own friend.

She believed none of it because she knew that boy with laughing grey eyes who had always loved her and believed her before everyone else and more than anyone else from her whole bleeding family tree. Despite how big and bad he may have grown up to be, he would never have killed anyone who didn't deserve it. As fate would have it--the same fate that gave her a life with Ted, a life she never regretted--Andromeda Eleanor Black passed away a year before Sirius Black escaped Azkaban. Before that though, she had made her daughter vow to find him no matter what and let him know that his favourite cousin would always be with him, no matter what, because good people had been so hard to find in her cold world.

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