A Study in Black

Black is black is as black does, she thinks as she frets nervously, trying hard not to trip over the hem of her school robe, made of material much coarser than that which graces her bed sheets back at home, or the finely woven one hundred percent pure Egyptian cotton towels which have not only her initials but also the family crest proudly embroidered on them back in the dormitory. The rain still falls outside and she stands drenched, shivering occasionally from the cold water trickling down her back – testament to the sheer ridiculousness that crossing the lake in the downpour represents, but somehow she expects no better from this particular headmaster, not after what she has heard from her sister

And now the time has come for another year of school, her first in this castle, and as the tattered hat is brought in and all the soaked young children, herself included, nervously line up, the hat bursts into song, but she pays no attention to it, too busy looking around, spotting three familiar faces amongst the tables.

Narcissa is a year below Sirius, who is a year below Andromeda, who is two years below Bellatrix, and the three of them are pretending that they are not watching her when her name is called. As the hat yells "Slytherin," her eldest sister finally acknowledges her presence and looks at her, while Andromeda’s brow creases as she sits at the Ravenclaw table and Sirius turns away and refuses to look at her – or at his friends – choosing instead to play with the red and gold tie he is wearing, probably unwilling to admit that he is related to her. She understands him, for once. She does not want to admit she is related to a Gryffindor, either.

***

Bellatrix Black I had three daughters. The second daughter, Isadora, had two sons, but one she disowned at a tender age.

She married late, but for a few years hers was the happiest marriage of the three. Her husband was of temperament and constitution equal to hers, but he left his wife the task of raising their two sons. Yet Isadora did not generally like children, hers least of all. The elder was flawed in so many ways that, as she was fond of saying, she did not know where to start listing them, while the younger, albeit much more satisfactory and malleable than his predecessor, seemed to lack the brightness the latter was throwing away in pointless bouts of teenage rebellion.

Like her mother before her, Isadora ruled her household with an iron fist, acquiescing to none and imposing her desire at all costs, trying to squelch her sons’ individualism and mold them into something to her liking. But she was not as successful as she wished to, and when Bellatrix II wrote home to inform that her cousin Sirius had gotten himself sorted into Gryffindor, Isadora had felt nothing but pure anger towards him, towards her miscreant of a son who so openly defied her.

And then, on that frightful summer morning six years later, when he stormed out of the house armed only with his wand and the clothes on his back, yelling that he was never going to come home again, because he hated her, hated his brother, hated his whole family and everything they believed in more than he had ever hated anything else before, she had walked out after him and slapped him so hard that he fell to the ground. Then she had walked back into the house without once looking back and gone directly to the parlor, where the great family tree hung, and charred his name off the tapestry with so much energy that she had singed the wall behind as well.

She was finally rid of him.

She was euphoric for the rest of the day.

***

Now that Bellatrix has graduated – along with Lucius, Narcissa remembers – the only member of her family left in Slytherin house is Regulus, Isadora’s second son. Isadora’s son, she corrects herself. Isadora only has one son now. As a matter of fact, as far as Isadora is concerned, the family histories should be rewritten and all traces of the blood traitor should be erased.

"My brother was a fool. An idiot. He never knew what was good for him," Regulus says smugly to her one morning over breakfast. "But at least I do, and Mother knows she can take comfort in that. I will not dishonor my family like he did, casting away everything he was given – and for what? For nothing! What did he expect to achieve, simply running out of the house like that, deserting his family? His family, the only thing he ever had!

"Stupid. Pointless. Just like him. Talking to those filthy Gryffindor mudbloods, socializing with them. He never understood the value of the blood coursing through his veins, the value of his last name. And to think he never even knew it! Half the school is frightened of him even know, wondering how a Black ended up in Gryffindor. I heard people talk about him in the hallways, wondering whether he was a spy for the Dark Lord, wondering whether he just happened to be evil and ridiculously brave at the same time. Bravery! What a pointless trait to posses in excess! By itself it will get you nothing but death!

"I wish his hatred for the family had run deep enough for him to change his last name. Then I would not have to cope with people asking me whether we really were related. But no. He was incapable of doing anything right, that one, and Mother has always known it. She was so glad to be rid of him, you should have seen her. As for me, I am glad he is gone too. He did not deserve to be a Black."

She finds it somewhat amusing that whenever her cousin is mentioned it is in the past tense. Yet what truly delights her is the fact that every single word Regulus has just said she has heard countless times before from his mother, this summer.

***

Bellatrix Black I had three daughters. The third daughter, Belladona, had three daughters herself, but lost all three to passion and devotion.

She married young. The first of her girls she named after the girl’s grandmother, the second after her favorite legend and the third after her favorite flower, never having been too inventive a creature. Of the three, Bellatrix was the boldest, Andromeda the quietest, Narcissa the cleverest.

Belladona had always had high hopes for her daughters, and her firstborn did not disappoint. Yet Belladona was angered when Bellatrix took her husband’s surname after her marriage and became Bellatrix Lestrange, seeing it as a slight to the family. Yet her anger did not last long, as Bellatrix wrote her a passionate letter about how fervently her new husband supported the Dark Lord, whose power was steadily rising and whose cause Belladona had latched onto, seeing in him the salvation of the wizarding world, overrun as it was with filthy mudbloods and halfbloods and all sorts of impure creatures demanding rights and threatening to overthrow the ancient wizarding families – like the Blacks, of course. She was a vain creature, of the sort who delighted in the knowledge that her third daughter had caught the attention of Lucius Malfoy while in school – Lucius, who was rich, whose family went back further than Belladona’s own, and who had taken a liking to her daughter. The day he appeared in her house and asked for permission to marry Narcissa, Belladona did not ask her daughter, but vehemently agreed on her behalf.

It was Andromeda who dealt her the worst blow, of course. Sweet, tame, mild-mannered Andromeda, who had been a Ravenclaw – better than a Gryffindor, Belladona had always told herself – and whom she had hoped to quietly marry off to some wealthy second-rate pureblood.

It was Andromeda who abandoned the family, not for a halfblood, not even for a mudblood, but for a muggle, claiming that she was in love with him.

As if love mattered in the slightest when one’s surname was Black.

***

On a winter morning, as Narcissa reviews for a transfiguration exam while slowly eating breakfast, an owl drops a letter next to her food. The envelope is made of rough, cheap paper, embossed with no crest, sealed with an amorphous lump of red wax, and she does not know who could have sent it to her.

She turns it over without trepidation, only mildly curious. None of the people she knows would use such paper to write a letter, and thus she guesses that the owl has probably made some sort of mistake when delivering it.

But then she sees Andromeda’s handwriting on the front of the envelope and wonders why her sister is writing her like this. Andromeda graduated a year ago, after all, and got a lovely position at the Department of Muggle Affairs, a position she has promised she will abandon as soon as she gets married.

Dear Narcissa,

I ask you to please read this letter even if you have been ordered by Mother to no longer be in contact with me. If that has not yet happened, I should warn you that it will, soon. I have run away from home, Narcissa, and while you probably do not care much for the reasons behind my behavior, I would much rather you hear them from me than from Mother, as she is sure to distort the facts and turn this story into something very distant from the truth, something acceptable to her delicate pureblood sensibilities.

I am in love. In love with a wonderful man, and he loves me too. I am also pregnant, but we did not get married because of that. We got married because we love each other. Before you let Mother convince you otherwise, he did not rape me, nor did he force me to sleep with him or anything similar to that. And yes, it is true. He is a Muggle. And I love him.

Do not worry about me – I don’t think you will, letter or not, but I feel better telling you myself – because I shall be fine. Indeed, I have a feeling that out of the three of us, I shall be the one who will be happiest in the end.

As a final favor, I know you have been told not to speak to him, but I ask you to please show this letter to Sirius. You do not have to say anything; just give it to him when you pass him in the hallway. I do not have time to write him an owl now but I want him to know that it was his standing up to Aunt Isadora this summer that gave me the courage to do this myself.

Your sister,
Andromeda Tonks.

The ghost of Isadora’s son shall forever haunt the family, she tells herself wryly as she gets up. She is grateful that it is late and there is no one left in the Slytherin table as she walks towards her cousin, dropping the letter in front of him without a word when she gets there.

She returns to her food, resuming her studying where she left off. It’s funny, she thinks, how when she started studying here she had two cousins and two sisters. Now she only has one of each.

***

Bellatrix Black I had three daughters. The first daughter, Elladora, had no children, but she had insanity to keep her company in their stead.

She was graced with her mother’s dazzling beauty, and cursed with her father’s hemophilia. Her blood was thin, her constitution frail. She married a French wizard, Alaphard Fomalhaut, and was so enchanted with him and his country that all her nephews were instructed to call her "tante Elladora" whenever they mentioned her; she in turn would call her nieces "ma cherie" and her nephews "mon petit," and insist on stuffing down their mouths as many petit fours as possible every time they came to visit. Whenever the family gathered, whispered conversations would always revolve around Elladora and her lunacies, and more often than not these conversations would involve sharp words.

Alaphard, who enchanted both by Elladora’s looks and last name had allowed himself to be seduced into the family, and, unaware of what he was getting himself into, found out about Elladona’s malady too late to pull back. Shortly after becoming married he took the only way out he could think of, turning to other women for the delights his wife could not offer him. Yet Elladora’s affection never seemed to waver, not even when she found out about her husband’s adventures. However, once his infidelity was in the open, life in general no longer appealed to Alaphard, and thus he poisoned himself shortly after.

Having been assimilated into the family against his will, he was loath to leave his personal fortune at the mercy of the three sisters, all of whom he hated. Shortly before his death he altered his will and left all that remained of his fortune to his wayward nephew, Sirius, who had already been disowned by his own mother for being everything Alaphard wished he had been in his own youth. The boy, who was finishing his studies in school, was quite surprised, upon arriving at breakfast one morning, to find out that he was suddenly rather rich.

***

Sirius has charms right before Narcissa, and thus every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning they are forced to walk past each other. But judging by the way he is always chatting and laughing with his friends when he leaves the classroom, she is not sure he has ever noticed her. Not that such a thing bothers her. They have not looked at each other for the past four months, not ever since he cornered her in the library and silently tried to return to her Andromeda’s letter. She did not take it back from him, of course. What use does he expect her to have for a letter from someone who no longer lives, anyhow? No, better leave the dead to the dead.

As his classmates file out she hitches her bag and enters the room, narrowly avoiding being hit by James Potter’s wildly flapping arms, as he attempts to describe his latest Quidditch match. She is surprised to find Sirius standing inside, alone; but he walks up to her, not quite looking her in the eye. "Alaphard is dead," he tells her. "I found out this morning, and I’m sure you didn’t, because seeing as to how he left all his fortune to me, I’ll wager he is no longer in the family. Yet I figured you’d be curious as to what happened to him when you visited my dearest Mother this summer and saw a hole in the tapestry where his name used to be, so I thought I’d tell you."

And then he turns around and leaves, and she can hear him shout "James, wait up!" before professor Flitwick closes the door and tells them all to sit down and take out their wands. Her mind is not quite focused today, but if Flitwick notices it he makes no comment, not even a mild reprimand at the end of the lesson.

Everyone knows about her cousin, about his daring escape and how he has rejected the Dark Lord despite his blood, and countless other exploits of his. Everyone knows about her cousin. Yet he is dead, as far as the family is concerned. Why Elladora’s husband would choose to leave his fortune to someone like that is something she does not care about.

On Wednesday, when he exits the classroom, he glances at her, very briefly, but she looks right through him, like she does with the rest of the school ghosts.

***

It was Wednesday afternoon and the women of the family were slowly gathering together in Isadora’s overly opulent dining room in somber silence, as gazes crossed and flickered but stubbornly refused to meet. It was not a normal Wednesday afternoon, but the afternoon after Isadora’s son had been arrested for murdering twelve muggles and one of his best friends, after having betrayed another the night prior - because despite all of Isadora’s words over the years, that Wednesday afternoon no one could forget that Sirius Black was once part of the family.

Elladora was lost in her own little world, humming softly, dressed in a flowing white robe much too light for the season. After Alaphard’s death she had moved in with Isadora, who presumably had nothing better to do than take care of Elladora, especially after her son’s attempt to betray the Dark Lord was thwarted, and he was executed for his treason. Isadora had lost a lot of her temper when Regulus died, and was nothing but a pale shadow of her former self. Perhaps that was why she had had the portrait painted, so that the memory of who she had been in her youth would never fade.

Nonetheless, she herself was not there. Not yet. Of the three women present – Elladora, Belladona and Bellatrix - not one knew where she was, but one thing they knew for sure – she was mourning neither the loss of her son, nor the fall of the Dark Lord.

As they waited, Belladona seethed with anger. She was furious, with Isadora, with her sons, with the world. Into her daughters she had tried – and for the most part succeeded – to inculcate her own love for the Dark Lord, only to have woken up two days ago and discovered that He was gone, struck down by none other than Isadora’s renegade son.

When at last Isadora entered the room, Belladona exploded, and began hissing at her sister like no one had ever seen do before. "Your son, Isadora. It is your son who has betrayed us; your son who has brought immeasurable shame upon the family! You were so quick to disown him, to insist that we all forget about him, so quick to make us all believe that he was insignificant and helpless, but instead he wormed his way into our Lord’s circle and led Him to his downfall!

"It is your fault, Isadora. Yours, and yours alone! Both of your sons, both of them sullied the family’s name, both of them betrayed the family and the blood, the family that gave them everything they ever had! Both of them you lost due only to your foolishness, to your stupidity! You have shamed the family, Isadora. You have shamed the House of Black, and that is what you will be remembered for!"

It was at that point that Narcissa finally arrived. When she walked into the room, everything her mother needed to be said had already been said, and Isadora stood frozen, glaring at her sister with as much hatred as her elder son had once shown her, so long ago. "How dare you blame me for his actions?" she hissed back. "How dare you!? Do you think that after having lost my son, my one and only son, my dear Regulus, to you and your Dark Lord I care in the slightest about whatever happens to Him? I do not care about your beloved Dark Lord, Belladona, I do not care, at all! The blood traitor is no son of mine, and if you think he is, if you think I had anything to do with this, then you are no sister of mine either! So leave this house now, Belladona, and don’t set foot in it again until you have come to your senses!"

Meanwhile, in the armchair next to the chimney, Elladora hummed softly, while Bellatrix fixed her gaze on the large tapestry hanging in the wall.

***

Narcissa has returned home with her mother, who sits down in her parlor, and bids Narcissa join her. She snarls at a house elf to make sure the tea is ready the moment her husband returns home and then faces her daughter. Her hands are shaking even now, with barely contained rage, and when she speaks the words tumble out of her mouth in fast succession.

"You must tell your sister, when you see her, that she has a duty now. That she must atone for our crimes. Tell her to find Him, to restore Him. Tell her to beg for His forgiveness if necessary, that the... boy, the traitor, is not part of the family, that he is a blood traitor, not welcome amongst us. Tell her to clear our name and atone for the boy’s behavior. I have supported none but Him, as long as He has been alive, and I will not have my sister’s sons destroy everything I believe in! She must tell Him. She must find Him and she must tell Him, and He must forgive us, because it was not us, not the family, simply Isadora’s treacherous son!" Her mother has descended to near hysteria now, and Narcissa turns away, giving her time to compose herself, like proper etiquette demands she do.

"Come here," her mother calls after a while, and Narcissa rises and obliges, allowing her mother to kiss her cheeks. The kisses are a mere formality, an awkward meeting of dry lips and soft skin exchanged only because a mother and a daughter should kiss, and appearances must be maintained.

"You may go now," her mother says, and Narcissa slightly bows her head, but once dismissed she has become all but invisible, and her mother pays her no heed as she heads towards the chimney and uses the Floo to return home, to her own family.

She is not a Black, but a Malfoy. The name of Black is cursed.

***

The day after Elladora died, no one wept, but those who were still alive went to her funeral, where she was laid to rest inside the family’s mausoleum, unlike her husband, whose last act stripped him of but the right to a measly plot outside the family’s crypt.

The day after Isadora’s son was arrested no one wept, because no one cared about him or his fate, but Belladona laced the afternoon tea with her namesake and killed not only herself but also her husband.

The day after Belladona died no one wept, but Narcissa repeated her mother’s words to Bellatrix, who listened and then softly Disapparated in search of her husband, to carry out her mother’s dying wish.

The day after Isadora died no one wept, because there was no family left to do so, but even if there had been, no one would have wept anyhow.

***

Narcissa is dressing herself for the family’s traditional Christmas dinner. It is a small, sober affair, and her husband has invited the usual handful of Ministry heads in order to convince them yet again of the dangers of trusting Albus Dumbledore. It is a yearly event, and a few years ago the Minister himself ceased offering Christmas dinners on the same day as the Malfoys, as guests found themselves unable to decide what invitation to answer.

She is giving her face one final inspection in the mirror, inside her parlor, when the door opens and a house-elf enters. Narcissa scowls, anger suddenly surging through her, as she has made it perfectly clear in the past that she is not to be disturbed when inside her chambers. "What is it?" she snarls impatiently.

"Mistress, there is... there is a house-elf outside, asking to see Ms. Black. Binky told him to go away, she did, but he says he must speak with the Mistress of the house. He said his name was Kreacher, Mistress, he said–"

"Kreacher? Bring the elf to me, then. And tell my husband to come here once you do."

As she waits, she renews her inspection, but with less fervor. She wonders why Kreacher is here, when as far as she knows he has not stepped outside Isadora’s empty house for the last ten years, until the door opens and Kreacher is ushered in by Binky, always with a look of fear on her face.

Kreacher looks old, very old, and she idly wonders why no one has beheaded him yet – he certainly does not seem able to carry tea-trays any longer without spilling any liquid on the petit fours, something which upset Elladora more than her husband’s unfaithfulness – only to remember that there is no one left to do so. The family is dead.

And then Kreacher tells her just how useful ghosts can be; he shows her how her good-for-nothing cousin will finally have the dubious honor of being good for something. And Lucius hears as well, and goes to tell the Dark Lord. And Narcissa feels no guilt not only because she fully believes in Lucius and the Dark Lord, but because despite what the elf may say, she is no longer a Black.

Nor does she care about them.

***

‘It was only after her father’s death – Phineas Nigellus, who for five years served as headmaster of the famed Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – that Isabella Nigellus took it upon herself to modernize the family and bring it back to prominence in the wizarding world, hoping to in time reach a status equal to that of the Malfoy family, whose holdings at the time accounted for ten percent of the land owned by wizarding families throughout the Isles.

‘Without a doubt, Isabella was one of the strongest women of her generation, yet, owing to her gender, she was not as successful as she desired, and thus most of her reforms were confined to her family. Yet in this sphere she achieved what few women before or after her have, a success due in part to the exceptionally weak character of her husband, Achernar Anglesey, who was the first in a long list of spouses to take upon himself his wife’s last name, thus becoming Achernar Nigellus. However, this was not sufficient for Isabella, who, desirous to dissociate herself from her father’s reputation modernized the family’s surname, translating it as Black, and altered the family’s coat of arms, adding to it the words "Toujours Pur," harkening back to both the family’s famed French roots and Isabella’s own obsession with pure blood.

‘Isabella also set up a matriarchal hierarchy within her family, extensively favoring her daughters and granddaughters over their male counterparts. Amongst other things, the women of the Black family were instructed by her to never marry below their blood and to under no circumstances adopt their husbands’ surnames, regardless of their own lineage, a tradition that is followed to this day.

‘It is said that she died lamenting having been unable to change the rules of succession in her family; she wished for the Black signet to be inheritable only by the females of the family, thereby excluding all male children from the privileges their gender had traditionally granted them. However, in this she was opposed by Achernar, who himself was obsessed with the couple’s son and did everything he could to secure for him both family wealth and his privileges as a first born.

‘However, their son, Elphinstone, did not survive to adulthood and upon Isabella’s death the signet passed down to her daughter Bellatrix, who herself gave birth to three daughters. It was in this manner that Isabella’s dying wish was fulfilled, even if there is no guarantee that the same will occur in the future. Yet to this day her influence is still felt, albeit to a lesser extent than in previous generations, and the Black family remains predominantly a strong matriarchy, and a tightly-knit family that values blood purity above everything else.’

Nature’s Nobility – A Wizarding Genealogy, pg 371.

***

Narcissa stops reading the old book with no expression in her face, save for her characteristic scowl. She stumbled upon it the other day, while looking for something else amongst her shelves, and leafed through it out of morbid fascination, and that in turn has brought her here today. Her mother gave it to her, shortly after Narcissa married Lucius, angered that Narcissa had gone down the same path as her sisters and was deserting her family, her blood – her name! – for someone else’s. The passage where the author spoke of Isabella’s obsession with the family name is heavily underlined, one of her mother’s attempts to remind Narcissa of what she was supposed to be.

These past days she has been alone in the house. Lucius is in Azkaban, but she is following the instructions he left her long ago, precautions should something like this ever happened, and working on securing his release. Draco is still in school, but will return in two days. Meanwhile, Sirius is finally truly dead, and Bellatrix no longer rots in Azkaban, but is once again free to follow her own lord. Family meant nothing to Bellatrix, it never did, and now that she is as insane as Elladora, it means even less.

Narcissa has not visited her mother’s grave since her funeral, fourteen years ago. She did not come to Isadora’s funeral either; no one did. Lucius and her were out of the country, traveling, Draco at home in the care of his nurse, and she did not hear of her aunt’s death until her return to England. Bellatrix was in Azkaban and Isadora’s son and husband were both long dead. She never saw a reason to visit. She is not a Black. This family means nothing to her, means nothing to any of them any more. It never really did.

She does not pick up the thick book from where she has left it, but prepares to leave nonetheless. As she does, she casts one final look at the mausoleum, once proud and tall. Now the family crypt is hidden underneath ivy and weeds and the marble has cracked and crumbled in places. No one will be buried there any more.

The family is dead, gone, the name only a relic from the past.

In the end, all five Black children betrayed their family. Sirius was not the first but he was without doubt the most virulent, and as he always did, left in his wake irreparable damage. Andromeda followed him, saying she was driven by love, and disappeared from the family forever. Then came Regulus, who betrayed blood, occupation, and lord; whose ineptitude and unwillingness to commit to the right cause inevitably brought forth his death. And opening and closing the family saga are Bellatrix and Narcissa, whose betrayals, despite being of a lesser kind, still hurt their mother the most, because she saw in her daughters’ abandonment of the Black name treason worse than its open besmirching.

In the end, all five Black children turned out to be blood traitors.

***

narie, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil
05.08.2003 - 22.08.2003