The Other Black Girl

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.

Strawberry Fields forever.

The Beatles- Strawberry Fields

Legends in the darkness:

When I was eight, I found a dying sparrow.

There was a heat wave that summer.

The sun beat ceaselessly down on the earth in kaleidoscopic rays. Heat engulfed the café terraces where wizards and Muggles lay sprawled out, visibly wilting.

In Britain it is a well-known fact that there is nothing more exciting than the weather: a bout of rain will bring hours of conversation; a heat wave will unite the whole country.

I was not aware of any of this when I picked up the tiny bird lying in the small copse that day. The heat was oppressive and it made the garden almost too sedate; the roses sitting prim and crimson and perfect, the trees swaying in the warm breeze. It was the early-1960's and the world was changing rapidly; however the garden stayed perfectly still, frozen in time.

We were not supposed to go outside in the midday sun. Mother was adamant, however much we moaned, that the sun would ruin our complexions. Mother was a tall blond ice queen, a goddess in our eyes and in the eyes of most of our world.

Cassandra Black was the eldest daughter of Lord Rookwood and came from a magical line even older than Father's. On the rare occasions she visited the nursery Narcissa would make our house elf nanny Minnie brush her long blond hair until it gleamed (even at the age of nine Narcissa was painfully beautiful) and afterwards she would wander around in her best robes for days hoping that a bit of Mother's aura might have rubbed off onto her. I would get tongue-tied and look down at the floor, terrified that I would come under her gaze. Even Bellatrix would lower her voice and stop in her tracks although she did not take any notice of Mother's commands.

She would run and hide in the copse, dragging me along with her and sometimes Narcissa, for although Bella was a year and a half younger than me she was my other half, my wild side. With Bella I could be anything--we would be Moraga Le Fae defeating King Arthur or Gifford Ollerton, slaying giants. We would run screaming through the woods barefoot, becoming wild children as opposed to the well-bred little girls people thought we were.

Bella came tumbling down the bank as I picked up the sparrow's broken body and showed it to her. She had leaves in her dark unruly hair and she was laughing but she stopped as she took the bird from me.

'Let's give it a funeral,' she whispered melodramatically her eyes going wide with what didn't look like concern.

'But it's not dead,' I said.

'Then let it die--come on Andromeda, let's!' she said and slapped a mosquito which had dared to land on her alabaster arm with a mixture of venom and impatience.

'What have you found?' came a voice and the pattering of large feet--Narcissa's only feature which wasn't exquisite. Our blond elder sister appeared to have taken the long route around so as not to crumple her robes. She had not wanted to come along fearing Mother's wrath if she found out but Bella had managed to persuade her. Bella had that effect on people.

'Oh,' she said, looking at the bird with distaste and adopting the authoritative voice, which she reserved for speaking to house elves and imitating Mother. 'Leave it alone, Bellatrix.' Narcissa was the realist of the family, the one who made sure that Bellatrix and I came back into the real world occasionally.

'No; we're going to give it a funeral' said Bellatrix and she placed the bird on a small mound of earth covered in bracken, kneeling down to listen to its rasping breaths. There was a dark smudge on her nose. Narcissa arranged the wildflowers as its life slowly ebbed away, suddenly forgetting her robes as she let her sun-kissed hair fall down onto the small burial mound.

'I think it's died,' whispered Bella after a few minutes. We sat together in silence for a moment. Nothing in our short lives had ever died before--we barely knew what death was.

To the untrained eye we looked almost identical but we were really contorted mirror images of each other. Narcissa was the image of Mother with her long blond hair, which we loved to sit behind for hours on end, plaiting and twisting, weaving flowers into the spun gold. She was already far too magnificent for a child--her looks were unsettling even to us. Then there was Bella--her dark untidy hair filled with leaves, her grey eyes overflowing with her strange dark unreadable expression, the one we never really understood until it was too late. Me--the brown-haired mongrel of the family with the same grey eyes and features but a strange mixture of the two of them: my sisters, my other selves.

We sat for a while linking hands, a protective circle around the small bird. None of us cried or even spoke. For the first time in our sheltered lives we had tasted the sting that would shape our worlds, the sting of loss.

****

We lived a double life. At home in the claustrophobia of the manor with its large dark forbidden corridors and glaring paintings of our ancestors, we were the perfect dutiful daughters. Mother had failed to produce a son and heir; however, her three pretty daughters were her biggest assets and we had a childhood fit for the noble house of Black.

As children we had an army of house elves to look after our every need, but Mother herself saw over our education. We learnt to play the piano and viola, to sing and dance perfectly, whom to make polite conversation with and, more importantly, who to look down on. Narcissa excelled at all these things, her beauty making her Mother's favourite. She showed little interest when we learnt to read and write in English, French, Latin and Greek. I learnt these languages quickly and soon became fluent--I was an eager student drinking in knowledge, poring over the ancient texts in the library and constantly being caught and shooed out by Father. Every spare minute I would be reading; my sisters found it amusing and would drape themselves over my shoulders, nagging me to come outside or hiding my books as a joke. Even Mother was bemused at my aptitude for learning and would lecture me on 'acting like a young lady'--in my parents' eyes, working hard was a sign of ill breeding. However, when they showed us off at dinner parties they would never miss an opportunity to let me chatter away to the ministry officials in fluent French about classical history. Our parents were proud of us, but they would never have admitted it.

We had separate beds but we seldom slept apart. We would huddle on Narcissa's large ornately carved four-poster and draw the rich hangings embroidered with the family crest until we were enveloped in darkness.

There, by candlelight, our other life began.

We would take turns to tell each other stories by the candlelight as though we were living in Arabian nights. Narcissa loved the tales of King Arthur, especially that of Guinevere, which was her middle name. She had old fairy tale books Mother had given her and she would whisper the stories, making them more elaborate every time. My stories were of Homer and the Iliad, from the writings of Virgil, which I would translate for my sisters (Bella was too impatient to decode them, Narcissa could have but preferred her dolls to books), re-telling the ancient tales of adventure.

Bellatrix's stories were always the best. She would make up the tales of horror herself: of vampires and werewolves, of dark curses and gothic romances. We would huddle terrified as they became more dark, more gory, as Bella's little face became more alive. Eventually we would fall asleep, huddled together so close that our different shades of hair mixed and it became impossible to tell whose limbs belonged to whom. However in the light of day we were at our most wild--when Mother was busy at parties or running the household, we would run and play in the woods, immersing ourselves in our imaginary worlds and playing different parts every day.

We had few real playmates; there were few children our parents considered worthy enough. The Lestranges, the Snapes and our Rookwood cousins were our main companions; however we never allowed them to visit our Worlds. Only our cousins Sirius and Regulus were sometimes allowed entrance--Sirius was a year younger than Bella and worshiped her. They both had the same wild and independent spirit, which caused them to sit, identical dark heads together, giggling and plotting. They would search around the garden for spiders to leave in the laundry basket for unwitting house elves and--if they were in a particularly devilish mood--Narcissa, who would flinch slightly and fling them out of the window. Sometimes they would disappear for hours on end and I would sit jealously wondering where they had gone, annoyed that Bella was letting someone else into our world.

When she was almost nine and I was ten I remember the three of us standing by the edge of the river, which marked the boundaries of our garden. It had dried up over the years and was now a small hollow around three metres across. We rarely ventured this far, however that day was the one Bellatrix had chosen for her most daring escapade.

'Shall I jump over?' she shouted. 'I bet I can do it.'

'Impossible, Bella!' I shouted back, knowing that now I had disagreed with her she defiantly would and feeling excitement well up inside my chest. Sirius, who was standing next to me, gave me his trademark impish grin; we had no doubt she would do it. Bellatrix was invincible in our eyes.

'You are wrong, Andromeda Black!' she laughed. 'Nothing is impossible for me!' And with that she took a large running jump. She flew through the air and Sirius and I held our breath; it seemed like her limbs had been enchanted. I waited to cheer, she was going to make it.

Suddenly she was falling short of the bank; she hit the ground with a crunch. Her legs buckled. Sirius and I gasped and ran down the bank to find her struggling to sit up, her eyes wide with shock. For one of the first times in her life Bella had failed something and it showed all over her face.

'What's happened?' It was Narcissa tagging behind as usual. Her beautiful face had gone white and her poise for once had slipped, her expression was one that few people would ever see on the face of one of our family. It was deep fear.

'It's her leg,' I called up to her. 'I think it's broken!'

Narcissa hesitated--she was the eldest and the one who made the decisions (Bella liked to think she was but it was Narcissa the more I look back on it). I could see she was weighing up Mother's fury against Bella really hurting herself.

'MOTHER!' she shouted, running towards the manor. I felt Bella's hand go rigid in mine; anger was burning in her eyes. Sirius and I exchanged looks; even at seven he knew that there was nothing more dangerous then Bella's temper. I dreaded what would happen to Narcissa when her leg mended.

Bella's leg mended easily with a quick charm from Mother. She had been having tea with our Aunt Black (Sirius's mother was a formidable woman who terrified me but I always observed with a kind of furtive pride; Mother was far more beautiful than her sister in law) and the Minister of Magic's wife and was not pleased to be interrupted by her youngest daughter's screams. Bella got her knuckles rapped several times with Mother's ancient silver hairbrush with the Rookwood crest on it and was confined to the house for a week. This was a light punishment even though she protested by screaming vocally and wouldn't speak to Narcissa for all of four hours.

Bellatrix usually bore grudges like most people bore war wounds. However, Narcissa was about to start her first year at Hogwarts and Bella and I were far too fascinated by all the preparations taking place to be angry with her. At the age of eleven Narcissa had turned out even more beautiful then we could have imagined; she had hit puberty early and her breasts were beginning to bud (she showed us as we were changing for bed, her face bemused as Bella giggled), her cascading golden hair was almost so long that she could sit on it and her face looked like one of the Greek statues in the rose garden, perfectly serene and proportioned.

Of course Mother had to order the best for the first Black in twenty years to grace Hogwarts with their presence. We admired Narcissa's brand new satin robes, fur lined cloaks and cashmere gloves all with the family crest on. I stole her schoolbooks and read them all into the small hours of the morning until I had nearly memorised them and took it in turns with Bella to wave her wand around (mahogany, unicorn hair, 13 inches) and try to admit sparks. Most of all we admired Father's present: a pendant of the Black crest dangling from a delicate silver chain which Narcissa wore with obvious pride as we watched, hidden at the top of the stairs, the house elves packing her things and Mother inspecting her. When she was satisfied she looked her daughter straight in the eye and said simply, 'Remember you are a Black, Narcissa, and I expect you to act like one. If you do anything to disgrace the family name then you will be taken out of school.'

The night after she had left, Bellatrix and I lay on her bed our small bodies parallel and almost touching so that we could feel each other's hot breath on our cheeks. As children we had never spent a night apart from each other and the thought of Narcissa in a cold bed far away made us feel as though we had lost a part of ourselves.

****

'So, Andromeda. You are beginning at Hogwarts. Well, eleven already--how time flies!' Father paced up and down the study and fixed his dark eyes on me. Phillius Black had the classic family dark looks, which Bellatrix had inherited--a respected man in the Ministry of Magic and a pillar of the magical world. I was even more in awe of him than of Mother.

'Yes Father.' I said. I was old for my year, nearly twelve, and I had turned out as a pretty girl with the slender Black figure and grey eyes. My hair was long and a dark brown. Although not nearly as beautiful as Narcissa's, I liked it well enough and even Mother had given me a nod of approval when she saw me dressed in my pristine new school things.

'Your Sister, from what I hear at the school governors' meetings, is doing her best to uphold the family name.'

'I know, Father.' I said trying to control my excitement at being with Narcissa again. She was not a good letter writer and I was desperate to see what her life at Hogwarts was like.

'I trust, Andromeda, that you will remember to act in the way that is expected of a daughter of the Noble house of Black,' he said sternly. Behind his desk the portraits of my ancestors all nodded and fixed me with the same steely gaze. They seemed affronted that a mere twelve-year-old girl was going to represent the family. In the centuries before, Black girls had not even been allowed to go to Hogwarts and had learnt magic at home.

'Yes, Father,' I assured him. He broke into a cool smile, satisfied, and the portraits relaxed back into their frames.

'Good girl--from the times I have caught you with my books I can see you will be a fine student,' he said casually and opened a small case to reveal a pendant with the family crest upon it, identical to the one Narcissa had received a year ago. I picked it up and dangled it from my fingers letting it catch the light. Then I looped it around my neck, struggling with the clasp, which didn't seem to do up as easily as I would have liked.

'Remember, Andromeda, that when you are wearing that necklace you represent the Family,' said Father after I had thanked him breathlessly. 'Whilst you are at Hogwarts you are to take extra care of whom you are associating with. If I hear that you have been seen in the company of Mudbloods or anyone below our family there will be serious trouble.'

'Yes, Father,' I said, shuddering slightly. I had never met a Mudblood and I was terrified I might talk to one by mistake; however I dared not ask Father what they looked like.

'Very well,' he said dismissing me with a wave of his hand 'Have a good term and remember what we have talked about.'

Bella almost went green with envy when she saw my new necklace. 'I don't know how I'm going to survive this year,' she whispered, her elfin face scowling.

'I'll write all the time,' I promised.

'Every day?'

'Twice a day!' I said and looked at her awkwardly. I hated long goodbyes and, now it had come to it, there was nothing I could say. Instead I put my arms around her small body and smelt her musky hair. Mother looked at us and raised an eyebrow but she let us remain embracing in the large dark hall of the house until it looked like I would miss the train if we stayed any longer.