Such a charming tableau as they presented, three young girls, sisters, dark, silky curls tumbling to their shoulders and mingling as they put their heads together over the book on the middle girl’s lap! The sun-drenched oriel window in the schoolroom of the Black manor house was perhaps the only corner of the gloomy old mansion that might serve as a setting for so sweet a picture, but the girls’ conversation was more in keeping with the general character of the house. The book’s title was You’re A Woman Now, and the slightly lurid cover illustration showed a baby-faced girl clutching her incongruously ripe bosom as she looked anxiously over her shoulder at a darkly scowling man.

The eldest grabbed the youngest by the wrist, so tightly that the smaller girl squeaked in pain.

"You’re not telling anyone anything if you know what’s good for you, you little priss. But I’ll tell you something. You’ll be at Hogwarts with us this fall, and I won’t have you embarrassing us by being such a baby. Now, Andromeda, I don’t know if you know this, but Hogwarts girls practice kissing with each other…"

"Ugh!"

"…and the rest, of it, well… Narcissa is quite right in her infantile way, the real thing is perfectly nasty, and the way the girls practice it is even nastier, and silly as well. We do need an actual boy."

"But he’s got to be, you know, our sort, and he couldn’t tell anyone. Could you hex him, Bella? I mean, whoever we get. And he’d have to be older, wouldn’t he, so he already knows…?"

Bellatrix Black, the oldest of the sisters, was rapidly flipping the pages of the book.

"No, no, it’s all in here… ugh, you’d think there’d be some magical way to do this… All right, this is what we’ll do. The boys will be here for midsummer…"

"Oh, Bella, no! Sirius is the same age as Cissa, and Regulus is a baby, and a crybaby at that!"

"It says here that boys can… even when they’re quite young. Of course, Regulus is a ninny and he always will be, but Sirius…"

Andromeda sighed. "He’s so cute. But what if he doesn’t want to?"

Bellatrix Black tossed her head and set her lips in a sneer that made her look older and more sinister than her thirteen years. "Cousin Sirius will do as he’s told. That mother of his! What can Uncle have been thinking?"

Narcissa spoke up. "She’s pureblood, isn’t she?"

"There’s pure blood and there’s good blood," snapped Bella. "Shopkeeping Alley trash! Pureblood, indeed! Not even Muggles will have them!"

Andromeda wanted to defend Cousin Sirius, but it could not be denied that his mother was, well… Certainly nothing like our mama, she thought. "Not really shopkeepers, exactly, Bella, more like merchants. They’re very rich."

"Well, then, that explains why Uncle married her. But she’s trash and she knows it, as much as she claims to be some sort of Black connection herself! She’ll be delighted if she thinks we’re all getting to be jolly chums. She’ll think one of us will marry one of them."

Both the younger girls gasped, horrified. "No!" they shrieked in unison. Bella smiled brightly. "And why not? That’s the way it’s done in royalty, and we’re..."

"‘Nature’s Nobility!’ Oh, Bella!" Andromeda giggled. "You scared me half to death!"

Narcissa, the youngest girl, refused to have anything to do with her sisters’ plan. "Mama gave me a proper book. I’m not doing anything naughty with boys until I have a wedding, with a silk dress and a lace veil down to my toes. You two are going to be bad girls, and get into trouble, and have to go to America and live with Muggles and wild Indians, and it will serve you right!" Having stunned her sisters with this speech – even Bella, whose eyebrows shot into her hairline – Narcissa turned on her heel and flounced out of the room.