Andromeda was propped up in bed with a hot brick magically heated under her mattress with her sisters on either side. Cissy was flopped on her stomach, idling twirling one of her curls that had lost its sproing while Bella stared moodily into the dying embers in the fireplace.
The room was large, with its ancient Queen Anne furniture and high vaulted ceiling, but there was no doubt it was still not large enough to contain all the disappointed hopes the sisters had suffered that evening.
Andromeda nearly told them what Sirius had said. She opened her mouth, but could only muster a yawn.
"I'm tired," she announced with false cheer, and slowly curled up into her pillows, adjusted her legs underneath the heavy covers. Cissy and Bella nodded and began to go, slipping off the bed and padding towards the door, but Andy could not bear the thought of passing the night alone in her room. "I didn't mean leave!" she cried, sitting up, and her sisters turned back at the door.
"Rodolphus will be expecting me," Bella said reluctantly, but she closed the door.
"Let's have a sleepover," Andromeda suggested. "Like we used to."
"Some of us are married now," Bella replied pointedly, but she crawled into the spacious bed, elegant robes and all, Cissy right behind her, all three suddenly children again, frightened and insecure. There was the usual exchange of empty words before they settled down.
"You're hogging the covers, Bells, move over."
"Ack - ! Cissy - your - feet - are - ice!"
"Mmm, much better."
"Sweet dreams."
"Good night."
Finally silence blanketed them all, a heavy, suffocating silence. It might have lasted minutes or an hour, Andromeda couldn't tell, but she wasn't the only one unable to sleep.
"Andy? Are you still awake?" Cissy whispered.
"Yes," Andy replied softly. The bed creaked as Cissy shifted, and though she masked it well with a cough, Andromeda could hear her quiet sniffle.
"Do you think they'll find him?"
Andromeda squeezed her eyes shut.
"I don't know," she whispered.
"Why would he do this, Andy?" Cissy asked, almost pleading. "Why now, when Aunt Walburga's been so sick? And Regulus just volunteered...I knew he was a bit rebellious, but quitting the family..."
Andromeda snaked a hand around to grab her sister's.
"Sirius will come back," she lied. "Don't worry, Cissy."
Cissy gave her hand a small squeeze.
"You both should be asleep," came Bella's irritated voice in the darkness, but she sounded resigned, not remonstrative.
"We could have Kreacher bring us some hot chocolate," Cissy said after a moment, hopefully. Bella sighed.
"We really should be going to sleep," she muttered, but she reached over to the bedside table and rang the bell that summoned the little elf.
"Yes, Mistresses?" Kreacher squeaked, at the door so quickly it seemed as though he had been waiting for their summons.
"Three hot chocolates and some sandwiches," Cissy ordered happily, and the old elf shuffled off again. Bella rolled her eyes and grabbed an armful of pillows to dump in front of the fireplace. Muttering a quiet incendio, she set a fire roaring, licking at the logs ferociously. Andromeda stared into its depths, fascinated.
"I can't stand it anymore, Andy - all this bigotry and hate, all this - this - " He gestured around at the decandance furiously, eyes sparkling with tears. "Regulus wants to be a Death Eater. A Death Eater, can you imagine? Off to slaughter human beings, off to being a noble sacrifice to the pureblood cause - and everyone is just so fucking thrilled..." He blew through his nose, tears now streaking down his face. "I have to get out."
"This is ridiculous, Sirius. You-you can't just leave," Andy whispered angrily.
"I can't watch them send him off to his death either," Sirius retorted, eyes blazing. "I've been sick of this pureblood bollocks for a long time, everybody knows that. I'm the problem child, remember? And yet I'm not the one jumping up and down at the chance to pledge my allegiance to a murderer." He pinned her eyes with a hard, painful gaze. "That's what this so-called "Dark Lord" is, you know - a murderer." Andromeda's stomach squirmed.
"Sirius, Regulus knows what he's doing - " she said firmly, but Sirius threw his glass to the ground where it shattered.
"He's fourteen!" he cried. Andy grabbed his shoulder, turning him away from the glass doors and the guests near them who had glanced their way.
"I know," she said soothingly, desperate to keep him calm.. "I know. But leaving, Sirius? Abandoning him?"
"He's too far gone," he said bitterly. "Everyone's too far gone - even you, Andy." She flinched.
"Sirius, I - "
"Don't. Just don't, okay? Stop trying to justify this. It's wrong, Andy. It's sick. I can't deal with it anymore."
"It won't be forever," Andromeda said, almost pleadingly. "We love you - your brother loves you - your family loves you - "
"Lies have a way of catching up with you, Andy."
"Penny for your thoughts?" Bella asked quietly. Andromeda jumped.
"Just thinking," she replied. "A lot...a lot happened tonight." Bella made a face, reclining on her pillow with the feline grace Andromeda had always wanted. She herself plopped down unceremoniously, while Cissy arranged herself carefully, vain as ever. Andromeda crossed her eyes at her younger sister, who stuck her tongue out at her.
"The Mistresses' hot chocolate and assorted sandwiches," came a squeak, and Kreacher shuffled hurriedly into the room, a tray in each hand, one brimming with food and the other with three steaming mugs of hot chocolate. He set them down with a fervent little bow and left.
"Honestly," Bella said after a solemn moment of eating, "I don't think I was going to sleep tonight either." Her sisters both nodded, thinking of the party, and the scene, and the look in Sirius' eyes as he'd slammed the door to his home closed forever.
"It was a nice ball," Cissy commented, somewhat lamely.
"Yes," Andromeda agreed, thinking of the vividly hued robes, the candlelight, the music. It had been a fairy tale, incandescent, fuzzy around the edges as she remembered it, almost like a dream.
"Until Sirius stormed out," Bella said dryly, but perhaps her mouth trembled slightly as she took a sip of hot chocolate. "I've been harsh with him, maybe, but those awful friends he has...Gryffindors, the lot of them. Ungrateful, spoiled..." She dwindled off, hooded eyes darker. "He ought to have been proud of his brother, you know. Joining the Dark Lord. Working to save our lineage." Andromeda shifted uncomfortably.
"He is a bit young, though, don't you think?" she asked cautiously. "Mother told me I was too young, and he's eight years my junior."
"Yes, yes, but he won't properly join for another year or so," Bella said impatiently. "And you know Mother; she'll never see any of us as a day older than five - personally, I think Uncle Orion and Aunt Walburga have the right idea, getting him in there early. He'll have time to move up the ranks. Besides, Andy, the Dark Lord is a visionary. It's an honor to serve him." Andromeda knew her sister was a Death Eater, but it was another thing entirely to have her talk of it so...reverently, to realize, suddenly, that beneath her sister's sleeve was a Dark Mark burned into her skin.
"I'm joining as soon as I can," Cissy chimed in. "Lucius is in and already the Dark Lord favors him especially." Andromeda felt her insides squeeze painfully.
That's what this so-called "Dark Lord" is, you know - a murderer.
"Rodolphus as well," Bella said automatically, though she didn't seem particularly enthused. "He says - " She stopped, wincing.
"Your back?" Andromeda asked, but she shook her head.
"I tripped a few days ago. It's nothing," Bella muttered, rubbing her lower rib cage gingerly.
"Let me massage it," Cissy said soothingly, setting her cup down.
"No, Cissy."
"My massages are the best, and you know it - "
"Cissy, sit down - "
"Stop being such a baby - "
"Don't touch me!"
Cissy drew back, frightened at her sister's tone. Bella had gone white, jaw clenched. Andromeda swallowed.
"Bella, what is that?" A mottled bruise was spread across Bella's thigh. Her sister froze, mouth tight.
"I'll need tights, then," she muttered, face red. She rummaged around her chest of drawers noisily. Andromeda stared at her.
"What happened?" she asked, frowning.
"I tripped," Bella answered. "Ah, there they are." She threw a smile over her shoulder as she began to slide the tights on. "They'll go nicely with this dress anyway."
"You tripped," Andromeda repeated skeptically, watching her sister busy herself, primping her hair, putting in earrings. "Just like that other bruise. And the scratch. And the handprint on your wrist." Her sister ignored her, spraying perfume into the hollow of her neck. "Bella, is Rodolphus hurting you?" Bella paused, then set the bottle of scent down with a dull clunk.
"No," she said with a touch of heat, looking at Andromeda through the mirror, catching and holding her eyes. "And I don't want to ever hear you say that again." They looked at each other for a long moment.
"Because if he was," Andromeda said quietly, "you could tell me." Something seemed to pass over her sister's face - a shadow or a flicker - but it was gone in an instant.
"Nonsense, Andy," she said briskly, turning her attention to tracing lipstick across her already blood red lips. "As if I'd let him." She smacked her lips, satisfied. "As if My Lord would let him."
Andromeda shot Cissy a warning glance, and Cissy sat back, cowed.
"Anyway," Bella continued, as if nothing had happened, "Rodolphus says that there will come a time when we do more than put the right people in the right places, so to speak. And My Lord has been training me to fight alongside him."
Andromeda found herself slightly discomfited by the look of awe on her younger sister's face as she watched Bella. All three sisters fell silent, each occupied by their own very different thoughts. The fire crackled and snapped, undulating like a living creature.
"Do you suppose they've found him yet?" Cissy asked, her voice jarringly loud in the quiet. Bella shrugged.
"Most likely," she said, staring into the fire. "He'll be punished, yes - and rightly so - but he'll be let back in. He's a stupid headstrong boy. Uncle will straighten him out." She flashed a quick smile at Cissy that held little real warmth in it. Andromeda suspected that Bella had figured out what Andromeda had known all along: that Sirius was gone forever, and that even as they spoke, his name was being blasted off the family tapestry.
"I should've - I should've been nicer to him," Cissy said uncertainly. "I never meant for him to get the idea that we didn't love him. He just said the most awful things sometimes..."
"He's just a little boy," Andromeda said. "Everyone's a fool when they're sixteen. He'll come around."
"I love you both," Bella said suddenly, still staring into the flames. "And I would never leave you."
"Me neither," Cissy whispered.
"Me neither," Andy said quietly.
Lies have a way of catching up to you, Andy, Sirius had said. She wondered how long that would take.