Something that came to me late at night and just begged to be written. Constructive criticism welcome. Sadly none of this is mine :(
It was impossible. It was just impossible that this shell of a woman who sat opposite her at the table, thin as a rake and shaking – whether from cold or insanity, who could say? – had once been a beautiful, vivacious woman, and before that a bright, funny little girl, her big sister, the centre of her world. Now her beauty was faded, her face gaunt, her sleek, shiny hair a mass of tangles. But the most obvious change was in her dark eyes, which through their manic glimmer betrayed the madness within. These eyes were currently boring into her, a smile touching the corners of the haughty mouth as she observed her.
"Is everything alright Cissy?"
"Just wonderful." The younger woman retorted sharply, not bothering to conceal the bitterness in her tone. "My deranged sister turns up with half a dozen Death Eaters in tow, dripping all over my kitchen because they decided to swim back from Azkaban..."
"It wasn't as if there was another option." Bellatrix offered, smirking. "The Dark Lord wished for us to prove ourselves. He gave us our means of escape but would not return our wands until we had returned to him on the strength of our own initiative."
"Dripping. All. Over. My. Kitchen." Narcissa silenced her sister. "And then you have the AUDACITY to tell me that it would be the Dark Lord's pleasure for me to harbour fugitives in my home! Dirty stinking fugitives!"
Her voice had risen in volume with every word, and she looked ready to explode with rage. However, this didn't seem to concern her sister, who threw back her head and laughed manically. "Really Cissy, it's as if you're ten years old again, raging at me because I splattered mud on your new robes. Who gives a damn about the damage to your kitchen floor when you have the opportunity to help the Dark Lord?"
"Help him?" Narcissa shrieked, her blue eyes huge and brilliant in her pale face. "And how does he plan to return the favour? With blood and ashes and my family further destroyed!"
"Destroyed?" Bella shook her head and moved around the table to kneel at her sister's level, capturing her wrists between her bony fingers. "No Cissy, don't you see? He has re-united us! And he will create for us a perfect untainted world if only we have faith in him!"
Narcissa was reminded with a pang of another occasion, shockingly similar to this one, when Bella had come to her, telling of her decision to join the Dark Lord. Her eyes had burned with the same fervour, the same utter conviction that she would succeed. But Narcissa, despite understanding the appeal of a pureblood world, prided her family's safety over the purity of its name, and had lost too much in the first war, to give her support to the second. But now, as before, she could say nothing in the face of her sister's blind passion. Instead, she pulled her wrist from Bella's grasp and pulled her sister to her feet.
"You need a bath," she said. "You look freezing...and you smell."
Bella laughed again, then suddenly and unexpectedly threw her arms around her little sister, burying her face in her long silky hair. Cissy tried not to flinch at the thought of the dirt and the damp (these were new silk robes, for the love of Merlin!) and relish in the rare moment of closeness with her sister. As she tightened her hold, feeling the sharp bones of Bella's shoulder-blades through her sodden cloak, she reflected that, even if her sister had changed for the worse, it was still good to have her back.