Serena Black || 𝑨𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒂

The noble and most ancient house of Black

"I can't help you there, Sirius," Walburga Black now said flippantly and without any sense of guilt. "If you knew, you should have stopped it. Or was that too hard for a pubescent good-for-nothing boy like you?"

"I never wanted children!" suddenly thundered so loudly that the last sleeping guests in the house might all have woken up. Serena's propped-up elbow had almost slipped off her leg when she had collapsed in shock.

She had to swallow the words at first. Although she had been aware that she had not been a wish child, the words still hit her right in the heart. Did he not want her to spend the holidays with him? Was he only doing it out of a sense of duty?

Suddenly, there was an eerie silence in the old house and she suspected that perhaps the cloth was hanging over the unfriendly painting again. Hesitantly, Serena stood up, not knowing what to do with herself. On the one hand, she was very hungry, but on the other, she was afraid to go down and meet her father face to face. Should she pretend she hadn't heard?

The decision was taken away from her, however, when her stomach began to grumble as loudly as if a bear had strayed into the Blacks' old house. She was still standing on one of the upper steps when her father appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "Serena?" he asked, dumbfounded, as she stared back, startled. "Did you hear that? That just now?"

Serena hesitated, but then nodded slowly.

Sirius sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Serena I'm so sorry, you know I didn't mean it.... Believe me, I wish I wasn't part of that family myself and I would have done anything to spare others from it too."

Apparently not everything.

The Gryffindor nodded a second time. "I-it's all right. I understand what you mean, really," she replied, trying to squeeze past him to escape the awkward situation. Halfway through, however, her father stopped her and led her into one of the rooms on the ground floor that Serena had not entered before.

The huge tapestry, which might once have looked quite magnificent, immediately caught her eye. Now its colour had faded and in some places it looked as if doxies had tried to eat it. But the golden thread with which it was intricately embroidered sparkled brightly enough for Serena to read the family tree heading without difficulty.

The noble and most ancient house of Black >>Toujours pur<<

Serena knew that the Blacks were a very old and richly branched family and yet she couldn't help but marvel at how many familiar names she read as she traced the myriad intertwined lines that stretched back to medieval times. Branches that connected parents with their children, brothers with their sisters and husbands with their wives.

With one finger, overwhelmed, she traced the fine line that connected her own name to a black hole. "My dear old mother blew me away after I ran away," her father explained in an occupied voice. "I was getting tired of all this delusion of pure blood. My brother, your uncle Regulus never had the courage to stand up to our parents and had finally paid with his life."

The burn was dark and ugly. It seemed that Walburga Black had left nothing to chance, for there was nothing left of her son on the carpet. But the shame would remain. The fire that had been used to burn out his name must have eaten through the fabric, for the R in Regulus could only be guessed at.

"Every time the family produced someone halfway decent, he or she was cast out," he continued, pointing to another burn mark between Bellatrix Lestrange and Narzissa Malfoy. "Andromeda Tonks. She was my favourite cousin and she married a Muggle-born man, which is why Tonks isn't even visible. But her sisters, of course, made respectable pureblood marriages."

The lines connecting the sisters to their husbands were shrouded in a strange red, almost glowing tone. Serena spotted these lines more often on the family tree, especially at the beginning of the carpet, which she could barely make out as high as it was. But not all marriages were connected with such a line. Many of them were also in a usually black tone.

Serena frowned as she glanced again at her own name. "Then why am I on the family tree?"

"Who knows what the ancient witchcraft of my deranged ancestors was thinking," he merely murmured, speculating, "Perhaps the family tree automatically continues and there was no one left to prevent your entry."

Looking further and following the red glowing line of Narzissa Malfoy, Serena's eye was caught by the name Camille Hall, which was right next to Lucius Malfoy's and also connected with a red line to Elijah Hall. Directly below her name were Damien Hall and Edmund Hall.

A wave of sadness overcame her abruptly when she realised that Camille had died a mere week after her youngest son's birthday. She didn't like to imagine what it was like to lose a parent so young. "You seemed quite affected by Camille Hall's death yesterday," she then remarked softly, her eyes still on the family's big name.

Her father sighed. "Camille and I had been something like friends for years, at least whenever her parents and ours had something important to discuss, until we came to Hogwarts. No matter how many times she had stressed it, I knew she hadn't really agreed with her family's machinations either. But in the end, she stayed true to her heritage, she..." He searched for the right words. "She never made the jump and that's probably what ultimately doomed her."

"You think that..."

"That she didn't just die," he finished her sentence with a sombre expression on his face. "Nothing happens by chance in families like that, believe me."

Serena nodded and looked at the huge family tree one last time before her father opened the door to the entrance hall again. The heavenly smell of pancakes and fresh eggs rose to her nose, signalling that it was probably finally time for breakfast.

However, she eventually had to force herself to take her eyes off the branching family tree and follow her father out of the room, who also took one last look back before extinguishing the light of the dusty chandelier. "To me, this is not my family and yet my heritage and the Black name is being used against me. Believe me Serena, it is a curse to belong to this family."