Three Facts about Cygnus Black III

Three.

Cyg-nus Black. Cyg-nus Black.

He'd always hated that name. It reeked of ancient times, having been borrowed from a centuries-old father's father, like a reminder that his family had once been great. That's all he was destined to be: a reminder.

They mispronounced it in class, whispered it in the common room, spat it at him in the halls. Cyg-nus Black, they taunted. Sickness Black. Stay away from him, or he'll infect you! It spread like the plague, and soon even his own brother was tentatively adding that extra k sound between syllables. He didn't bother to correct them; it was too late to stop the habit that had become fact.

Two

He was glad that his marriage was arranged – he didn't think he'd have been able to find love otherwise.

It wasn't that his wife wasn't agreeable. Druella Rosier, twenty-five years old to his nineteen, was pleasant and enchanting and absolutely beautiful. Sin-yus, she'd call to him in her charming French lilt (so beautifully free of ks), won't you come to the parlor? But he didn't think his parents would ever have allowed him to find his own love, even if he could have – not the kind of love he'd have looked for, anyway. He'd have been struck off the tree in an instant. So Druella was fine, and his daughters were fine, and he wouldn't pretend it any other way.

one

He really didn't know what to believe anymore.

He had seen his eldest daughter go to the Dark Lord's side, making the family proud, the youngest following in her wake. He had seen the middle child betray him, fleeing to the Mudblood's side. And now he saw his wife, the one he had grown to admire in a way he hadn't thought himself capable, face-down on the bedroom floor, black-and-gray hair protecting her blood-spotted face from his sight.

Bellatrix had almost been too obvious. Her narrow dislike for her mother's indifference to this reign of terror had been prevalent at a young age, and he couldn't believe he hadn't curbed it then.

Can't you? something asked him. Would you really have done it?

He knew inside that he was too much of a coward to defy his family, that all-encompassing source of power that only seemed to grow more intimidating with time. He wouldn't (couldn't) show anything besides the utmost respect for that thing which he dreaded – which had killed his Druella! – and rebelling would hand him the same fate on a silver platter, delivered by the daughter he had almost loved with all his heart.

Sometimes, though, he wondered if that wouldn't be better – because what was the point of his existence if he didn't have something to live for?

Cygnus Black, the sickness of lies and false honor, lives on.

A/N: Written for brazensers's Unknown Character Competition and published a whole thirty minutes before the deadline. Procrastination at its finest. Hope you enjoy!

Ebaz