The Other Black Girl

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven- W. B. Yeats

The Unholy Trinity:

When I was younger people used to say we had 'blue blood'; old witches in shops admiring our pale smooth cheeks, nervous ministry officials who came to talk to Father on business, the wizarding world paying homage to the prestige of our name, although we were too young to realise it. Yet their empty flattery awakened my naive curiosity. I imagined my blood like the ink running from Father's quill as he scribbled orders; so deep blue it was almost black. I was determined to find out for myself if it were really true, so on a rainy day I sat alone, aged five, propped up on black velvet cushions in the forbidden drawing room. It took a while to draw blood; without Bella's presence I was more cautious and hesitant to split my pale skin and it was tentatively that I sunk in Father's silver letter opener. However, it was not the shock of the pain that caused me to cry out, sending a house elf in the hallway scurrying in fear, it was the dark crimson trail oozing down my arm, like rich red wine, salty to my taste. They had lied. My blood was as red as everyone else's.

It was the first time I ever, for one dazzling second before the terrifying feeling passed, doubted the dominance of my blood.

************************

But, as I sat waiting for the first years to be sorted, I had no need to doubt its power. Never before had I fully exercised the influence of my lineage, however I was now thirteen and beginning to realise my cautious, unfurling beauty, a beauty that made Theo go slightly tongue-tied and Dorcas Medowes treat me with even more disdain.

I was not as dark as Bella, whose alabaster skin contrasted with her long ebony cascades. At Hogwarts she was always the centre of attention, leading her own little gang of elite admirers. Her beauty would smoulder in the flicker of the firelight as her enchanting laugh echoed over the common room, the same laugh that sent first years scurrying with fright when she was in one of her rages. Bella was enchanting and when she was around you could not help but fall under her spell.

Nor was I as hauntingly pale as Narcissa who would sit oblivious to the captivated stares of every boy in the school as she sat at dinner, brushing her long flaxen hair and barely touching a bite of food. Narcissa treated the world with cold indifference, barely acknowledging her admirers as they competed for the favour of the most beautiful and well-connected girl in the school. But we had none of the sweet prettiness of other girls; ours was the harsh startling primeval magnificence of the elements. Narcissa's spirit was made up of water and ice whereas Bellatrix's was earth and fire, far too much fire.

My own element was un-defined. I had inherited Mother's icy nature, hiding my emotions away behind my books, but my beauty belonged to the Blacks, the dark colouring, the pale skin, the strikingly aristocratic features and, of course, the slightly hooded grey eyes. For when I least expected it, the 'Black Passion', my birthright, would flicker inside me opening up a whole new world of possibilities.

There were differences between the three of us now, forged by the strange transit of puberty and the way Hogwarts strived to magnify the once negligible age differences between us. So we were forced to run circles around each other in the common room and transcend the mundane day to day world of others. Bella treating the world with predatory amusement, Narcissa watching it with cold duty and I skirting its edges with restrained fascination. However it would only be a matter of time for the three of us to congregate together and real life to start.

We would gravitate towards each other, looping our arms around each other's waists, playing with each other's hair and causing everyone, Rabastan, Theo, Rodolphus, Dorcas, even Lucius Malfoy, to melt away, knowing that when the three of us were together intruders were no longer tolerated. It was not just our housemates, the whole school knew that when we were together our identities evaporated and we became the infamous Black Girls, striding through the school arm in arm, our long hair flicking as we radiated the incomprehensible power of our name and the wild splendour we embodied.

The 'Unholy Trinity', the Gryffindors called us, making Bella shriek gleefully as we sat alone by the flickering fire of the empty common room, young, laughing and beautiful. We never talked about everyday topics, not wanting to have to enter the dreary world of others. Instead we would plan the future, not our future--not the future Odette cheerfully prattled about, planning out marriages with a casual flick of her nail file, not the inevitable future of marriage and motherhood to enhance the family fortunes.

Just a future, a collection of hoarded dreams reeled off with the flick of Narcissa's hairbrush: visit the pyramids of Egypt, the Steppes of Mongolia, go to China, India, and Africa, meet the Voodoo priests of Haiti, the Egyptian high Goblins, traverse the Himalayas, the Amazon forest. Every night we would spin more and more, Bella writing them down with an eagle feather quill in the back of her Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook.

'Do you want children?' Bellatrix asked casually. 'I know we have to,' she sniffed disdainfully. 'Heirs, but if you had the choice?'

'Of course I wouldn't, given the choice, ' Narcissa said scathingly. 'They will be such a bore! Besides it's not like we get to carry on the family name is it? How about you, Meda?'

'Merlin, no!' I shook my head and they both laughed. 'I guess you don't Bella?'

'Andromeda, your powers of perception never cease to amaze me, anyway children will get in the way of my plans.'

'Plans?' I said, amusement for once showing in my voice.

'I want to be infamous,' she laughed enigmatically.

'We are already, silly. We're Blacks,' Narcissa said as she sorted through her hair ornaments, pausing to hold a diamond incrusted orchid up to her hair.

'Not infamous enough, besides I want to be more than the family name.'

'Well you will, when you get married and have to change it,' said Narcissa in a matter of fact tone.

************************************

'Andromeda Portia Eleanor Black, are you going to watch Sirius be sorted or are you just going to stare into space?' Bella's voice woke me from my thoughts and I gazed up at the line of first years all looking incredibly apprehensive, except for a dark haired figure in robes with the family crest on them who was waving at us manically.

'He looks about as nervous as you did Bella,' I smiled and remembered my younger sister's sorting. Bella had stridden up to the sorting hat with her nose in the air barely letting it touch her head before it yelled its verdict. She had of course demanded immediately to be sorted into Slytherin and the hat had obliged.

'Actually I was shocked at how conventional Bella's sorting was. I expected the hat to put her in Hufflepuff or somewhere equally frightful. I know how she loves to shock!' I exclaimed, causing everyone around us to laugh, knowing that only Narcissa or I could get away with a comment like that.

'You're just jealous because your sorting took so long!' she retorted in mock annoyance.

'How would you know when you weren't even there?' scoffed Dorcas who as a 4^th year was old enough not to be in awe of Bellatrix.

'Cissa told me,' Bella retorted. 'I suppose the hat wanted to put you in Ravenclaw?'

'I'm surprised it didn't, from the number of books she read over the holidays,' laughed Theo Nott whose own elder sister had been a Ravenclaw, installing a healthy lack of inter-house competition in him.

'Oh, Ravenclaw can't be fun at all,' exclaimed Odette. 'Imagine having to mix with all those frightful half-bloods.'

Narcissa and I exchanged raised eyebrows and Dorcas snorted exasperatedly at Odette's usual melodramatic tone. However, none of us disagreed with her sentiments, after all what was school for if not to meet the right people?

We fell silent as the first new Slytherin (Odette's younger brother) was sorted, breaking into polite applause as Bertha Jorkins gossiped about each quivering first year's family.

'There's that Snape kid, doesn't his Father work for yours, Narcissa?'

'Merlin knows! I can't keep track of all the half-bloods Father has working for him. Who's that red-head?' Narcissa pointed to a small red haired girl with a scowl on her face.

'No idea, Mudblood I suppose from the look of her.'

'She's glaring at that Potter boy something dreadful, it reminds me a bit of you, Bellatrix,' Narcissa said with a rare stab at teasing.

'Well, I'm with the Mudblood on that one. Who wouldn't glare at a Potter,' Bellatrix said in such a disgusted tone that I had to smile.

The Potters were occasional visitors into our circles, tolerated for their money and little else. Harrison Potter was a self-made businessman who owned a large chain of magical equipment stores and was not only new blood, but also and far worse, American. Whenever he came to do business with Father, Bella and Sirius would hang over the banisters and giggle at his loud vulgar accent. James, his scowling son, whom Sirius seemed to have a personal vendetta against, ever since he had discovered Sirius merrily putting a house elf headfirst down the toilet and run screaming to tell Aunt Eugenia, was always with his father.

'Black, Sirius!' Professor McGonagall called and we turned to watch Sirius place the hat on his head.

It hovered over his dark hair, so like that of the girl beside me who had been ferociously saving our cousin a place. For a time there was expectant silence as the hungry students waited for the hat to reach its verdict.

Too long a time.

'GRYFFINDOR,' the hat shrieked and Bella dropped the goblet she was holding, the shards of glass hitting the floor in an empty clatter.

*******************************

In years to come I would ask Sirius what had occurred between him and the sorting hat that fateful day and he would laugh and change the subject. At the time our upbringing took over. Narcissa was volunteered as the one who should write home. After biting on her quill a moment, she straightened up and began to make decisive strokes on the parchment. There would be no howler of course, the Blacks did not air their dirty laundry in public, but it would be preferable for the family to find out from us as opposed to the inevitable gossip. There was no shame in Gryffindor for other families. But there was for us. We had never before graced the tower with our presence and it was un-thinkable that even Sirius, in trouble almost as much as Bella, should break this tradition.

I sat in the corner of the common room, brushing my hair again and again until it gleamed and concentrating on keeping my face still. I watched my beautiful, captivating, devastated younger sister from behind my potions homework as she cursed a first year that had got in her way and hoped, prayed almost although I did not know whom to pray to, that she had fully vented her anger.

'How are you?' I pulled him aside at breakfast the next morning and stood stiffly in front of him.

Sirius scowled. 'I have to share a dormitory with James Oh So Noble Potter and Mother will have another excuse to shout at me in the holidays.'

'She would anyway.'

'Have you seen Bella?' he asked in a monotone, glaring up at me, as if daring me to probe him further. I frowned and bit my lip, wondering what to say and then it poured out.

'I miss her.' He looked very young suddenly and vulnerable in his alien gold and red uniform, making me want, for a strange startling moment, to hug him but knowing that I was not capable of it. Then he snapped back abruptly and the spark in his grey eyes returned.

'Well at least the Mudbloods are scared of me--that's something,' he said and grinned at this sudden after-thought.

An hour later when I came out of Arithmancy fuming, I would wish that I were as lucky.

**********************************

When I had asked Mother if I could do Arithmancy, she had laughed and told me not to be so absurd.

'Meda, girls don't do Arithmancy, they do Divination,' Narcissa whispered soothingly. Bellatrix who had been shouting at a house-elf in the hall now turned to Mother.

'Why can't Andromeda do Arithmancy if she wants to?' she demanded,rising as always to the challenge.

'Because no one wants a wife who's cleverer than they are,' said Narcissa as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

'Andromeda's cleverer than anyone without trying,' Bella retorted loyally.

' I know Bella but--'

'If you don't let her do Arithmancy, I'll do Muggle studies,' Bella announced resolutely. Mother turned around, looked at her for a second and then slapped her hard across the face before she turned back to counting the family silver.

But Bella did not give up so easily. The moment Narcissa had let her take the ice off her burning cheek, she had grabbed my arm and marched me to Father's study.

'Andromeda, tell Father the sine of 90,' she said, glaring back at the portraits who were muttering amongst themselves.

'It's one,' I said, wondering where this was going.

'Bellatrix, what is the meaning of this?' Father asked, folding the Daily Prophet and surveying his youngest daughter angrily. She stared back defiantly, her eyes flashing with zeal.

I bit my lip. I had never done anything to invoke Father's rage before. However, I had seen what had happened to house elves who had displeased him and I knew from where Bella inherited her vicious temper. Bella prodded me pointedly and, summoning my courage, I asked:

'Father, please may I do Arithmancy?'

He opened his mouth as if he were about to refuse me. However he seemed to hesitate for a second and then change his mind.

'If you promise to apply yourself,' he said finally, 'then I shall sign the form.'

So it was with a strange feeling of triumph that I sat in my first Arithmancy lesson. Glancing around I realised that I was the only girl in the class and drew a sigh of relief to see that the seat next to me was still empty. Much as I preferred the boys in my year to the girls, when it came to schoolwork I kept my distance from them, knowing the baffled way they reacted to my intelligence. I had long given up attempting to talk to them about schoolwork, hating the way they would suddenly go quiet and change the conversation to something more 'girl-oriented.' Even Rabastan, who had treated me with a kind of wary but fierce pride ever since we had first kissed, delighted that he could gain the attention of one of 'The Black Girls', would laugh and tell me I thought too much. So it was to my annoyance that the seat was taken by the person I least wanted to deal with.

'Tonks, you appear to be sitting next to me,' I snapped as he proceeded to tip out the contents of his bag, scrabbling around for a scrap of parchment.

'Ooh, doo I? How absooolootly terrible,' he answered, imitating my clipped vowels and opening up a battered textbook.

I sighed and shifted my chair as far away from him as I could manage. The other Mudbloods in the school were wary of us, happy to carry our bags and scurry away meekly from us in the corridors but Ted Tonks was different. Although his robes were tatty and his books second hand he had a reputation to rival our own for daring to answer back and get brilliant grades. Half the first years were already trying to copy his cockney accent, sending peals of laughter through the library as they crowded around him.

'Why are you sitting here?' I snapped. 'Can't you go back to your little Mudblood friends?'

He shrugged. 'I could, but I figured we should work together, coz under all that 'ostility you're actually quite clever.'

'Excuse me, is this a peace offer?' I asked narrowly.

'You wish,' he said, smiling at me and beginning to ask me my opinions on the calculus spell.

So we became Arithmancy partners, bending over the parchment together as we became lost in the numbers we scrawled down, although we still grated on each other's nerves and in the corridors we still snapped at each other. Although to me he was still just an uppity Mudblood who insisted on calling me Andy and telling me I talked like I had a mouthful of marbles, the moment we opened our textbooks we would call a temporary truce as we worked together on harder and harder problems.

The truth was, although I would never have admitted it, we worked well together. I was the neater, more accurate worker, always double-checking my work and rarely making mistakes. Whereas to my annoyance he had the natural flair for numbers and although his work was always messy and hurried, he would pick up and understand formulae quicker than I could, sighing melodramatically as he explained them to me. On our own I was too slow and he was too slapdash but together we soon finished the work we were supposed to do and took on extra assignments. And despite myself I found that I almost looked forward to the lessons where we would find ourselves debating loudly over the correct spell or formula to use, leaning back on our chairs as we faced each other in animated indignation.

There was also one other guilty, unsettling reason that Arithmancy was fast becoming my favourite subject. Despite all my attempts to avoid it, despite all my better judgment, I was soon finding that there was one maddening fact I could not ignore.

Ted Tonks could make me laugh.

When you are flying around and around the world
And I'm lying alonely
I know there's something sacred and free reserved
And received by me only

Semeosonic- Secret Smile

Conventional?