a/n: Now is the time to tell you that there are some slight DH spoilers. But nothing explicit beyond what is revealed/mentioned in chapter one - in other words, no character deaths, etc. If you're really on-alert, don't read (but then, you probably shouldn't be reading fanfic…) I worked really hard on this and am very satisfied with it - hopefully it will break my writer's block. :) Review; concrit is always appreciated.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I know of the person who does: J.K. Rowling. (Bloomsbury and Scholastic, and Warner Bros., own the rights, don't they?). I do not.
Bellatrix Lestrange is a madwoman.
She is not drunk on power, which is the second oldest temptress. She is drunk on the first - the most crude, the most vile, the most primal substance of corruption. Blood. She has a thirst for pain and the shining substance it leaks. It is an unquenchable thirst; a beast-like instinct. She views it as taste one must acquire, that she has acquired, through the years.
Bellatrix Black was not always that way. Bellatrix Black was a refined young lady who spent more time perfecting her sneer than her cackle. In that time, she did not care so much about the beauty of a knife for it fatality, only if the knife was Goblin-wrought silver.
But values will always be part of Bellatrix. They pulse in her pure blood. They are her pride, and pride and honor are everything to a Black (even the estranged ones). They form her core.Goblins, no matter how lovely their workmanship, tarnish it with their filth. They are filth. Like mud bloods. And werewolves and blood traitors and scum.
The years made her mad. The years and the pressure, the stuffy family tapestry that burned to her eyelids and suffocated her. It wasn't unpleasant. She loved it. She lived for that tapestry. And she would remove the revolting names of werewolves and blood traitors and scum from it if there was need. God forbid. Such a need would be urgent.
Bellatrix Black became Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix Lestrange searched for beauty and purity in her life, and her real madness lies in the fact that such notions were delusions. Those delusions were dirt. They were dangerously corrupt. She sought out those who, like her, had acquired the fine taste for blood. But more so, power.
She was led to him.
Her Lord.
And, he, he more than blood and pain and purity, became her purpose. He ensured all those things and made her heart sing a sickly-sweet psalm. Because of him, her goals and her purpose and her very core were ensured of their righteousness.
She is pure. Forever.
Toujours Pur.
Narcissa Malfoy is a pretty girl.
That is what her husband told her the first time he met her, when her parents and her sisters had left the parlor to leave her and her newly-betrothed together . They were the first words out of his mouth, and they were much more polite than passionate. Passion was never a friend to her. It did not live in her heart or soul or values.
She may be a woman, but she was always best suited as a girl. Something in her slight figure, or her impractically long hair. Or her light voice. Or perhaps it is because girls - specifically the Black daughters - were viewed as dolls. And because, unlike her sisters, she is suited to that.
Narcissa Black was raised in subservience. She is not icy or fiery, like her sisters. She was an unhappy medium, an unhappy girl-woman, and when she became Narcissa Malfoy she became an unhappy wife.
But she was a deliriously happy, frighteningly happy mother. She was so thrilled that the feeling overwhelmed her. She was afraid to touch her baby. A boy! Even her husband was delighted. But she, she was afraid to so much as touch him. She was a delicate woman. She was afraid that her baby had inherited this, along with a pale, gray version of her blue eyes. She would find out later that he had even less strength, for he loved no one. She loved him.
And so there came a time when Narcissa Malfoy was forced out of the beliefs she had never believed in and had to make her own decisions. Speak with her own words. Move by her own will. She trembled the entire time, but there was one priority, one very good reason: her baby. Her baby, yes, the one thing the awoke passion in her. A fiery struggle for survival; an icy will to triumph. A maternal instinct that rose to the surface and exploded within her like nothing ever had.
He would live. He would live. He would not die for the purpose, no, no!
But for once, the blood that has brought her so many privileges feels like a curse coursing through her veins. She is forever cursed - cursed by her own subservience, cursed by her name - Black. Cursed by the beliefs which she upholds until the choice is plain: the cause or her baby.
She wishes she could renounce her name. She would give up her entire fortune. But at this point, there is no logic. There is no name. There is only her baby, and an unexpected, underlying sense of guilt.
Toujours Pur.
Andromeda Tonks is torn.
Everything she does is contrary. She shuns an entire chunk of her nature. She shuns her name. She wants and does not want to belong to that dark, traditional world that she left. She tries to hate it; tries to tear it from her memory. It's impossible. She secretly wishes she could belong to both.
Andromeda Black made faces during dinners, across the table, to her cousin. And when he let out an involuntary grunt of a laugh, and her mother's sharp eyes would swirl to her, she would make a show of keeping up snide detachment. Her cousin was a dashing boy. He was dead. His name, like hers, was probably burnt out of the family tapestry which had awed her so much as a child. The fibers of the tapestry would be blackened over their names. This made her sad, somewhere deep where her pride would not let her tell.
Andromeda Black looked uncannily like her sister, but Andromeda Tonks could not be more different in character. She was a Black, at one time, and proud of it. She sneered at muggles because they were lower life forms. She sneered at the mudbloods because they were a lower class.
But then, she married and she was no longer a Black - in a much different manner than either of her sisters. Her very heritage was denied her. Love at first sight was her downfall, a downfall she both relished and collapsed into silent sobs over. She had always wanted to rebel, and now she had. It was tearing her apart.
When Andromeda Tonks' daughter was born, she single-handedly chose the name. It was traditional - she did not know why she chose it; it reminded her of her family. Maybe that was why she chose it. Just this once, she liked the elaborate, archaic quality. Her husband didn't, but he let her have her way after she had gone through labor. He was kind like that; flexible where she was iron. Little did he know that she was corroding from within.
Andromeda Tonks thought she had changed. Thought that she was no longer a pure-blooded snob. Tried to hold onto her conviction that, ever since she made those faces at her cousin as a child, she had been different. She was not like her sisters, or her mother. She was her own person. She could accept that which her family could not.
But she recoils at the sight of him, and consequently shuts herself in her room. Her husband can't get her out. Her daughter is crying. She was so happy, so happy, to show her mother the ring. And for her mother to draw back like that… Andromeda Tonks knew she must be hurting her daughter. Just as her own mother had hurt her, deep in a place where her pride would never allow her to tell, when she announced her own engagement.
That was different, she tells herself.
No it wasn't, comes a smoke of a whisper. It sounded like her mother. The last time she had spoken to her mother, her mother had been shouting at Andromeda Black. Telling her that she was no longer her daughter, no longer of her house. No longer a Black.
It was impossible. Her name was still there, blackened beyond recognition. As much as her mother or she herself would like to deny it, she was still a Black in blood.
Toujours Pur.