Gallery of Evil

The blackest hearts have the most secrets, she had been told, and she supposed it was true of houses as well. This one, for example, had many secrets that even she knew of, and of course many more that she did not, and could not expect to ever know of. A childhood so isolated from her mother's family, and from their houses, had guaranteed this. Andromeda had known much about this house. As a girl, she had told her daughter, she had loved to visit her aunt and uncle's house, and had been a frequent guest. But Andromeda was not here to share her wisdom with her daughter.

And so Nymphadora, driven by curiosity and of course the practical need to make the house safe for the Order, was forced to discover the secrets of Grimmauld Place on her own.

At times, her clumsiness caused calamity. At others, it led her to the most fortunate places and circumstances.

There really was no other excuse for her to be lying there, staring down the silent, dimly lit hall. No other excuse for being so curious, for needing to know what exactly that hall concealed. She could see pictures on either wall, carefully spaced, until the darkness made it impossible to see further. She could not see, from this angle, quite what the pictures portrayed, but she could make out at least the faint outlines of figures. Portraits, probably, then.

She stood, cautiously, slowly, and put a hand out to brace herself against the wall. Steadied, she turned her attention to the shadowed paintings, shivering despite her self at the cruel silence.

Coolly, distantly, she examined the first, noticing without shock that it was a woman - a woman who much resembled her aunt Bellatrix, her aunt Narcissa, her mother - and herself. The classic Black.

Most, looking between Bellatrix and Narcissa, can not see the similarity. Most have difficulty believing that the pair can be sisters. Nymphadora believes it. It isn't the hair color, or the way their bodies are built. Those factors seem to differentiate the pair, obviously and painfully so. Those features don't matter. It is the long aristocratic nose, the lips curved into a perpetual sneer. It is the vicious arc of the eyebrows, the long slender dangerous beauty of the hands. It is, most of all, the cold darkness residing so powerfully in the pits of their eyes. It is, most of all, the haughty bearing and heartlessness of their lives. It is the utter Blackness of them.

She looks like that, she knows. Somewhere, somewhere true, is a form of her bearing all those traits. She is a Black and her body, her face, will never let her forget it, no matter how she disguises it at times. She can not help but walk with that same pride and self-assurance, buried though it is beneath her clumsiness - adopted to cover it or existing in her naturally. In her weakest moments, she can not even cover the superior attitude that lurks somewhere deep inside her. It is her mother's gift to her only child - the same features and blood as some of the vilest wizards to grace the earth.

In more normal circumstances, Nymphadora often made light of her familial relationships. Humor, she admitted wryly to herself, was the safest defense against the Black within her. There, though, surrounded by the ghosts of her long ago relations, she had no defense. That hall, filled with the ghostly silence of her family's dark past, had a way of stripping away the self she has adopted. It had an odd and distinctly unsettling way of revealing her to herself, revealing her as the way she truly is.

Her heritage is why she changes, she knows and admits, if only to herself. She can't help but wonder if this strange ability of hers comes more from her mother's desire not to see her cursed family in her daughter's eyes than any odd twist of fate. Is it more than coincidence that the girl trying to separate herself from the weight of that inheritance is given the ability to make herself so different?

Her mother, towards the beginning of her rebellion, Nymphadora is told, tried very hard to chase away all those features that made her Black. She dyed her hair brown, charmed her eyes to a lighter coloring. Nymphadora remembers sitting on her mother's bed, watching her mother get ready for work every morning. As a child her mother's transformation fascinated her. As an adolescent, she pitied her mother for attempting to do something that could never be achieved, for Andromeda was not her daughter. Andromeda does not have her daughter's gift.

Standing there, though, surrounded by that family her mother had tried to flee, Nymphadora finally understood. She understood why her mother ever felt the need to cut herself off from them so completely, and why her mother had given up. Because it was impossible, even for Nymphadora, to ever truly erase the Black within.

The woman, the still figure that glared condescendingly at her, Nymphadora recognized. It was the face engraved on the back of the mirror her mother kept at the back of her dresser. The mirror her mother didn't realize Nymphadora had seen. A Black mirror. It was obviously some sort of family heirloom, something Andromeda had taken with her when she fled the rest of her family. Nymphadora wasn't sure why her mother had taken it, or why she had even kept it.

It was just another reminder of a past Nymphadora had thought her mother should forget. It was just another relic of a heritage Nymphadora had been certain should be left behind them.

But her mother had kept the mirror, and from its etching, Nymphadora recognized the painted features, so distinctively Black.

The next picture, on the opposite wall, was the same. Not the same woman, but the same idea, the same features, staring coldly back at her.

And so it went, on down the long hallway, faces of women Nymphadora didn't know - couldn't know, but who reminded her far too closely of herself.

It took many, many looks at many, many portraits before she realized what was wrong, what was missing. It had been tickling cautiously at the back of her mind, but it took time for it to reveal itself to her.

The pictures didn't move. No jumping from frame to frame, no yelling or cursing or any of the things she was accustomed to paintings doing. They stared at her, cold, silent, judging. She had no doubt they could move, if they wanted to. They had been witches, powerful, all of them.

Powerful, and often evil. She didn't need the portraits to tell her that. She knew enough of the history of her family to know that the Dark Arts had been practiced among them for as long as the House of Black had been a house of wizards. And it was her house.

The inscriptions of the frames, naming each face, gave only one surname, though nearly all had been married and taken on another name. These were the daughters of this family, women hiding their black hearts behind other names.

It was almost scornfully that she thought of the large portrait in the front hall. That woman had been no true Black. The assumption of the name could never be enough, try as one might to become a true Black. She had tried too hard, Nymphadora thought; Sirius's mother had just tried too hard.

None of these women yelled. Their disapproval showed in other, more discomforting ways: subtle glares, condescending glances, disdainful smirks. Somehow, their silent scorn was far more forbidding than any screeching could ever be.

Nymphadora took another step, then another, under the watchful eyes of the sisters and daughters of her ancestors. Some, she suspected, she was descended from directly, even. What they said was true - that there were not enough Pure-Blooded wizards in the world for the family lines to stray too far.

Personally, she had always blamed inbreeding for the insanity that seemed so rampant in so many Pure-blood families. In her own family. Every one knew Bellatrix was mad, and Nymphadora had always privately considered Narcissa to be, in her own, less conspicuous way, just as crazy. Even her mother - perhaps her mother was the craziest of them all.

And what did that make her? She had inherited her physical features from her mother's family; she had inherited their pride. Was that insanity there as well? Could anyone judge oneself to be sane or not?

She could see the end of the portraits now, the empty space where no frames yet hung, and where likely no frames would hang for a very long time. Perhaps forever. Her picture would never find a home on these walls; she had had the great misfortune - or perhaps it was fortune? - not to be born with the surname Black.

The hall probably went on forever; she didn't doubt that in a house like this such a room could exist. But the portraits - they had to end, didn't they? Who else was left, to be so Black?

She was coming to faces she half-recognized, knew she had heard personal tales of. Her great-grandfather's aunt, perhaps, and then his sister. Her mother would have known them, she thought, and was only half surprised at the bitterness of the thought.

The end was close, and she almost dreaded what she knew was there, before the wall bore no decoration. She didn't want to see them, but she knew, knew without a doubt, that she couldn't retreat now. It just wasn't done. No retreat in the midst of battle.

It was almost a shock when she saw the first of them - the first she recognized in full. But there were only a few portraits left, and from there, she knew whose form they held. She didn't have to look, didn't have to examine the hatred-filled faces to know who they would be.

That first, it was Bellatrix, and Nymphadora stood directly in front of her aunt and stared. The face in the painting stared back, silently sneering. She doesn't know why she was so surprised by her aunt's muteness, though the other portraits had been the same. Bellatrix was supposed to be wild, crazy, but there she was, and she was silent.

Silent does not mean sane, or tame, or safe, though, not in this house. Silent means watching, and judging, and dangerous.

She remembers her own mother, remembers how quiet the house got when Andromeda was angry. Narcissa, she has heard, rarely says anything in public unless absolutely required. No one says the same of Bellatrix, but no one has ever said she is loud, either. They just assume it, as though lunacy of Bellatrix's sort requires a voice.

The worst of curses require the fewest words.

She didn't look at the next portrait just then, the one on the opposite wall. Didn't want to look, didn't want to see what was there. She saved that for last. Not the best, not the least. But she couldn't look, not yet.

Instead, she looked at the picture next to Bellatrix. Narcissa stared at her, much the way Bellatrix had. She too was silent, but no one expects any different from her. To Nymphadora, she seems the coldest and most distant of her mother and her sisters, but perhaps that is Narcissa's chosen insanity.

Nymphadora has been told that Narcissa dotes on Draco, spoils him, but she doubts it, somehow. She doesn't think her aunt is capable of love, or affection. Money can't buy you everything, but it can make many things seem not as they are.

Money makes the world go round. Even the thought, the reference to anything Muggle made her feel slightly, inexplicably dirty. Muddied.

The connections within her mind brought her, eventually and understandably, to that last portrait, and she had known she had no choice. She turned, slowly, to face the place where her mother's face might - or might not - hang.

The frame was empty. There was no one there, no one staring back at her. Andromeda was gone from her painting, just as she was gone from her family. That empty background, though, fascinated Nymphadora for longer, even, than the presence of either of her aunts had.

She closed her eyes, opened them again, turned and leaned against the wall.

In the shadowy light of the hall, the light that seems to come as much from the portraits as to illuminate them, one could almost believe that it is Andromeda there, Andromeda returned to her portrait, Andromeda come home to her family.

There is no noise, no sound, though the long hall of paintings.

Silence is far madder than words.