Dyslexia: Language disability, I have it, get over it or don't read, no shit there will be spelling, missing words, and grammar mistakes. PM me if something truly bothers you.

Disclaimer: JKR owns her rights.


Summary: Sometimes, rifts open up in the fabric of time, rifts like a thread pulled in two. And like the spaces between the stars, one can find themselves falling through. Bellatrix and Regulus fall through one such rift, finding themselves thirty years in the future. What shall they find after so long with the world spinning without them?

Keynote: No one is getting returned to the past, one-way trip. I did change the timeline, a bit.


And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

oOo

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

-Robert Frost, 'Acquainted with the Night'


Chapter 1 - Acquainted with the Night

"Bellatrix, Alnilam, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Alnitak, Saiph, Mintaka, Meissa A, and Meissa B," Bella listed the stars of Orion to her little cousin.

How in the world Bella came to be the one to babysit him, she would never know. She wasn't particularly good with children.

Her six-year-old cousin giggled, "Meissa, you could have been Meissa."

Bella bared her teeth at the little boy, "You could have been Meissa. Stars don't have genders."

Regulus smiled and pointed at a different star map, "Not-ah, my star is Leo."

"Then you could have been Iota."

He pouted at her, then asked, "If you weren't your star who would you be?"

Bellatrix scanned the maps, and pointed to a smaller constellation, "Lyra." It was one of the brightest stars in the sky, and if her parents had named her that no one would ever have called her Trixxy or Trix.

Not that anyone dared to say that to her face now, but still, her first four years at Hogwarts hadn't been pleasant. Of course, that probably had more to do with her personality than her name.

"Lyra," Regulus repeated. "I like it," he declared, "Lyra Black. But I like my name, I like my nickname too. Reggie Black."

Bella sighed, six-year-olds, not great conversation makers.

Looking at the timepiece on the mantel Bella noticed something rather odd. It was like someone had cut a black tare in the wallpaper. She stood, walking around the desk to look at the rift.

"What's that?" Regulus asked, running for it as the black strip got bigger.

"No!" Bella yelled, lunging for him, and as she caught his small arm, the rift opened like a curtain of midnight.

And it swallowed them whole.

Instinctively, Bella wrapped her arms around her little cousin as the floated in a darkness so complete, so vast, she could not tell if her eyes were open.

She couldn't discern a lot, such as how long they had been falling, if they had been falling, whether she was hot or cold, whether they could make sound or breath. She, at least, was too frightened to do either.

And then as if someone had poured ice water over them, the fell back through in a world. From absolute darkness to even the dim light of the room felt too bright, like waking in the middle of a dream.

They landed in a dusty heap on the ground.

They landed hard.

Regulus immediately began to cry.

"Shut up," Bellatrix hissed.

They were still in Grimmauld Place, but something was different, mainly, it was filthy and the books and maps she had out on the study table were gone. She listened to the sounds around them, Regulus sniffling beside her. There were people downstairs, voices she did not recognize, and four legged somethings running around inside the walls

Standing, she brushed the dirt off her skirts. Shushing Regulus, she grabbed his hand and crept them into the hall, which was just as dank as the study. What the bloody hell had happened?

And she heard her uncle's voice in the tapestry room; We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.

She peeked into the room, empty but for her uncle and a boy about her age who she did not recognize. Uncle Orion had a hand on his shoulder, his face looking -kind.

Kinder than Bella had ever seen it.

He glanced up, sensing her presence and she saw shock colour his features, his mouth popping open. "Bellatrix?" he questioned.

The stranger spun to face the door, his eyes a startling emerald green.

"Father!" Regulus cried, running into the room.

To Bella's surprise, Uncle Orion dropped to his knees on the dirty floorboards to embrace the small child. Suspicion grew in her at once. Uncle Orion would never have reacted like that, even if they had gone missing for a time, which was the only logical explanation of the state of the Black Family House.

Bella ignored the emotional reaction of her Not-Uncle and the child to look at the boy who stood before. She smirked when she saw he had drawn his wand.

So he wasn't stupid. She liked that.

"Who are you?" she asked.

His eyebrows shot up as if surprised she had to ask, "Harry Potter."

She sniffed, "I thought the Potter heir was eight years old."

He frowned, "I'm the only Potter. At least, in the wizarding world."

Bella glared at him, "Then you must be a mudblood because the only Potters I know in the wizarding world, have an eight-year-old son, same as my cousin."

Harry Potter glanced at the wall beside them, at the tapestry, "You're Bellatrix Black?" he asked warily.

"Father's dead!" Regulus shrieked.

Bella was very good at tuning the little ones out, but that -that caught her attention. She pulled her wand and pointed it at the Not-Uncle, "Who the hell are you?"

The man looked up, "Sirius," he said, tears in his eyes, "Sirius Orion Black, your cousin. Bella, oh Merlin, Bella, you- you and Regulus have been missing for over thirty years. You were presumed dead."

Regulus clung to the man -to his older brother, his much, much older brother. And Bella knew he was who he said he was, the kindness, Sirius had always been too kind for his own good. She had wondered when Aunty Dearest would beat it out of him, apparently, she hadn't. Though, she couldn't say the man looking up at her was the picture of health.

"Where are my sisters?" she asked next.

"With their husbands," he said.

Bella spun to the tapestry. She found Narcissa's name first, married to Lucius Malfoy and they had a son named Draco. "Why is Andromeda's image burned off?"

"My mother, of course. She burned me off too. Cousin, your parents, my parents, everyone but your sisters, myself, and," he rubbed the crying boy's back "-and Reggie is gone."

A wash of grief at her father's passing swept over her, but she swallowed the sea of emotions, blinking rapidly before a single tear could form. The Potter boy- good Merlin, he must have been Sirius's friend's son, he was watching her curiously.

She turned on her heal, "You didn't tell me where they were."

Sirius followed her, "I'll take you to Andromeda. This place -well, you wouldn't want to stay with me."

Thirty years, she thought as she went down the steps. This place had not aged well. Perhaps Aunty had decapitated all the house elves.

"Sirius," Regulus asked in a high voice, "Are you going to stay with us?"

"I wish I could, little brother, but cousin Andromeda will look out for you. She missed you loads."

The child started crying, again.

She was halfway through rolling her eyes, when the curtains on one of the portraits flew open and began wailing.

It was so unexpected, and proceeding Regulus' scream of terror, she did what was natural. Bella blasted a hole through the portrait and the wall beyond it.

The Potter boy began laughing, which thankfully calmed Regulus. She looked back to glare at the still laughing raven-haired youth and found Sirius grinning down at her as well.

"Thank you," he said with obvious gratitude.

Looking at the name of the portrait, she realized it was the last vestige of her dead aunt.

Bella couldn't say she missed the bitch and certainly didn't regret obliterating her likeness. She had burned Andromeda off the family tree. Bella didn't care what Andromeda had done, no one cut her sisters out of the family tree.

Footsteps came running down the hall and Sirius said to the Potter boy, "Don't tell them anything." And catching Bella's hand, Sirius apparated them out of Grimmauld Place.


Andromeda was having a rather blue Christmas. Nymphadora would be officially moving out soon, she would be a full fledged Auror. A newly minted Auror at the beginning of the next war.

Andromeda didn't know what she would do if she lost her daughter, she had lost so many in her life, and a dark part of her felt it was inviability until she lost her Ted and her daughter as well.

That feeling crushed her.

Narcissa wasn't fairing much better, what with the Dark Lord had taken up partial residence over her house and Lucius being on his shit-list.

Of course, Lucius didn't know that his wife had kept in contact with her older sister.

But then he was a fool.

After Bella and Reggie had disappeared… There was no separating the remaining Black sisters, even if they scorned each other in public. Narcissa still snuck her son over for tea during the summers. Although Andromeda had yet to be invited to the Malfoy Manor, she was not resentful of that. That world was one she had been happy cast aside.

Andromeda didn't truly like Lucius nor did Narcissa truly like Ted. But they both accepted that their wizard of choice brought some happiness, some stability to the other's lives.

And it was this habit of hiding, rule breaking in the case of family, that didn't immediately have Andromeda calling the Aurors when Sirius Black apparated into her living room. Ted was still in the shower and Nymphadora had gone out.

Having her wand pointed at his jugular, Andromeda didn't immediately register who was with him, who he held in his arms, whose hand he held.

All the air left her lungs. Lowering her wand she put a hand to her long-lost sister's face. She was as beautiful as the last time she saw her, and as young.

"Dromeda!" the young boy cried, holding out his arms. She sheathed her wand with a flick of her wrist and took him at once, her cousin, little Reggie.

She was crying, and pulled her sister into a one armed hugged.

They had been dead, their disappearance had broken what left of the elder Blacks' sanity. But here they were, alive.

Bella allowed the hug longer than she ever had in front of others before. Stepping back, Bella asked, her lips curved in an ironic smirk, "So, big sis, what did we miss?"


AN: I am spoiling all of you. If you want more please leave some reactions, your thoughts, and your damnations ;)