AN: For Caitlin's Flowers Challenge, as well as my own Births, Marriages and Deaths Challenge, since I never got to upload anything for that one. 411 words.

It was a stormy January night when Druella brought her first daughter into the world. A daughter, instead of the son she had craved. She couldn't help but feel disappointed. All those months, all the weeks and days and months of not being able to fulfil her marital duties; of not being able to attend balls as she loved to do; of gaining weight and losing her natural slender beauty. Of knowing that, when Cygnus attended alone, as propriety demanded, he was surrounded by younger, prettier, more available, women.

And for what? A daughter. A daughter. A worthless daughter.

But the smile on Cygnus's face as he came into the room, carrying their baby daughter, forestalled her apologies. He laid the little girl in her arms, saying, "It's all right, Ella. If we can have a healthy daughter, we can have a healthy son. And isn't she just such a Princess? Our Princess Bellatrix."

"You wouldn't be saying that if you'd heard her screaming when she came out. She was definitely more of a Bellatrix then," Druella retorted, her voice just a fraction too tight to be jocular. Cygnus hesitated, unsure what to say. At last, he merely held out the hairpin of jewelled flowers he had tucked into the pocket of his robes.

The pin was 24-carat gold and the smooth white flowers were made of mother-of-pearl.

"How lovely," Druella murmured. Exhausted beyond measure by her travails, she could hardly summon the proper enthusiasm, but the gift truly was gorgeous.

Luckily, Cygnus seemed to understand. Without a word, he bent and pinned it into Druella's tumbled curls, letting his hand linger there just a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

"They're Edelweiss," he whispered, "Edelweiss for noble purity. Edelweiss for the birth of our Black Princess."

The last bit fell from his lips not while he was looking at her, his exhausted wife, but instead at the fussy infant in her arms. He laid a hand on the babe's head and she quieted instantly.

Faced with the over-indulgent note in his voice and her own relief at his ability to quiet Bellatrix, all Druella could do was nod. Nod and wait for him to leave before she summoned a House Elf to take the child – who had begun screaming the second her father left the room, as though she could sense her mother's indifference - from her and deliver it into the charge of the already-hired wet-nurse and Lady Governess.